Power Love

2012-01-30T06:00:00.001-06:00

WE'RE BLEEDING INTO A CUP WHEN WE'VE GOT ENOUGH WE'LL JUST PAINT THE WALLS

It's called The Waiting Room, the bar. You get a number when you walk in. You can sit anywhere. Order anything. No charge. John's number is 42. The numbers are shown in red LED light on the back wall. They start at 1 each day. Bar's been in existence since they figured out it'd be easier to get rid of the unhealthy people instead of taking care of them. They don't like to show a running count--it freaks people out. Freaked out unhealthy people cause riots, which are expensive to suffocate and a pain in the ass besides. Stuff them with their fantasies and those same people will walk into the execution chamber on their own. Easier all around. Cheaper too.

John sits on the banquette along the wall adjacent to the bar. They already know he prefers naked women to live music so that's why he's here tonight. Tomorrow they'll have a band. The day after, a magic show. They're not merciless, you know, they're not gonna send you to die without first giving you something you like. They're not monsters, after all.

John is wearing a white collared shirt and a blazer, dark wash jeans, wing tips. His hair is combed. He's wearing the subtlest sent of aftershave. His eyes are bright. His skin is clear. To look at him, you wouldn't guess he's unhealthy.

She is all soft curves and sexy coos. She's wearing black lace lingerie with a black sheer dress over it. As she slides over to him, John can feel himself die a little. He loves black lace lingerie, the drape of sheer over a woman's body. They know that, of course. Already he's where they want him.

She's holding a two finger shot of whiskey. Her eyes are almond shaped, but John can't see what color. The lights in the bar are dim and the candlelight throws shadows like confetti. Her lips are parted slightly. He will trace his finger around them. He will slowly kiss the long line of her neck. When he sees the goose bumps erupt from her creamy skin, he'll hold back the tears.

"Single malt?" She says when she's at his table. He gestures to the spot next to him and she sits. She smells like flowers and cucumber body wash. He wants to run his finger up the inside of her thigh. But before he can, she says, "Whatta ya got?" Her voice is like a song so the hardness of the question takes a moment to slap him. "Blood," he says. "Really?" She says. "I thought they got rid of all the bleeders."

She slides her index finger down the side of the whiskey and pushes it towards him. John knows that in the shadows there are other people playing out fantasies, trying to avoid the number in red LED light on the back wall. He is 42. He will know when it's his turn.

She is tracing his ear with her finger. She leans in and waits a second, then traces his ear with her tongue. He watches goose bumps erupt on his skin. He downs the whiskey. Her heavy-lidded eyes are fixed on his throat.

"I didn't need meds until last week," John explains.
She slides her hand over his. "Doctor file the paperwork?"
"Said he wouldn't," he says.
"They get bonuses for filing." She's whispering into his ear. "Did you let him take an x-ray?"
John looks down at the table, at his hands spread out like smashed spiders, at the sensual curve of her fingers over his. He drops his head.
"Bigger bonuses for x-rays," she says.
"I've known him forever," John whispers. "He said he wouldn't--"
"Yeah," she interrupts, "they all say that. But we don't live in that world anymore."

She turns her body toward him, her breasts pressing into his arm, then she slips her leg over his legs and now she's facing him, her hips moving into his, her mouth barely touching his neck. He can feel her breathe. She slides his hands along her hips and places them on the small of her back. The soft silk of her sheer dress. The warm life of her skin. Before he closes his eyes, he sees the red LED light on the back wall. It slides easily from 41 to 42 and the woman on his lap sets the palm of her hand over his face. He can feel the air trapped in his throat. He tries to inhale, but he can't. He wants to fight it but he knows it's useless. Instead, he focuses on the tiny hips that are moving into his, the scent of flowers and cucumber body wash, the letting go of memories. His legs barely kick when the air runs out of him.

And now there is one less unhealthy person in this world. One less nasty job of taking care of someone else.

2011-11-17T06:00:00.003-06:00

IS THIS THE TALE OF JOHNNY ROTTEN

What happened was: I was in this really big, ventilated box, chained to a chair, the promise of windows somewhere near but not seen, surrounded by office supplies, and suddenly the whole place morphs into a dragon and I'm plopped down in a vast field, the dragon at one end and me at the other and I'm like, "Shit, now I gotta fight a dragon," which isn't a negative, mind you, it just absorbs a lot of resources, so I send my knights out onto the battlefield ahead of me and some of them get firebombed, which is really annoying because just last week in dragon fighting class we learned how to avoid that exact same tactic but some of these guys--shit--it's like, they've been knighted, right, so they think they know it all, which is why I'm currently sponsoring legislation that would require all knights to go for yearly education certification and there's kinda been a bit of resistance from the knight unions on that but after the dragon battle I just witnessed I think we can all agree that the facts are on my side and so then, some of my knights are still standing but so is the dragon and so obviously I'm going to have to go to battle and my squire insists on putting on my armor, but I hate that shit, it gives me really bad hat hair so I strut out to the middle of the field and I'm like, "Dragon, today is your last day on Planet Kim," and the dragon laughs because it thinks it's big shit now--yesterday it was a location and today it's a dragon but you know what, yesterday I was trapped in a ventilated box and today I'm gonna decapitate a dragon so suck on that dragon breath and this is what I'm about to say when I see that the dragon has its claws out and is advancing rapidly and menacingly and in one hand it has a net and I've seen those nets before, once you're trapped in one it will take you eight years to get out, if you get out at all, and behind me I hear my knights yelling yesterday's dragon fighting lessons and from the Bose speakers in the sky I hear Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir," because I've requested that song to be played during all my battles and my stupid fucking brain freezes and so do my legs and I can't register what my knights are yelling and I can't get my legs to move and my arm goes numb and my sword falls to the ground with a loud CLANG and the dragon advances and it's so close now I can smell its breath and it needs a breath mint desperately and right when the dragon raises its knife-like claw I suddenly remember the gun in my waist band and I pull it out, aim, blow the dragon away and one of my knights yells, "ANACHRONISM!" which makes me happy since we learned about anachronisms in yesterday's film class, which we had after dragon fighting class, so at least one knight is retaining some of the free education he's getting, and perhaps I'm not battling according to the rules of proper engagement but it is a box that's morphed into a dragon, after all, and sometimes survival trumps rules and just at that point the sky turns blue and the sun shines brightly and Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On" blasts out of the Bose speakers in the sky, and all at once, no one is bitching about bringing a gun to a sword fight because they're too busy tanning themselves and finally I can breathe and maybe now it's time to walk away, before the next war starts.

2011-11-04T06:00:00.000-05:00

ONCE YOU'RE GONE YOU CAN'T COME BACK

In front of him the tea party spreads out in a promenade of lace and white and silver candlesticks. Tiny cakes dot pretty silver plates. Flowered tea cups hold red punch. The Lions on the wallpaper stand upright on their back legs and keep watch. The Humans love The Lions and The Lions love The Humans. This is a celebration.

The Sleaze is standing in the doorway. He's sucking on what looks like a lollipop. It's actually one of his many daddy issues. His pockets are stuffed with these lollipops. They make it somewhat cumbersome for him to move.

The thing that makes The Humans turn and notice him is the smell. The room has been filled with a pleasant lilac smell, but now the stench of desperation is starting to permeate the air. It smells like broccoli that's been left too long in the fridge. Because The Sleaze has spent his life curling up with his desperation, he thinks it smells clean, like soap, so he's confused when The Humans don't hug him. But he's not surprised. He's spent his life not being hugged.

The Lions on the wallpaper snap their heads and glare at The Sleaze as he shuffles in. They can't stand his smell, or those loud sucking noises, or the sad way his lips curl around those lollipops. But one of The Humans, The Graceful One, looks at the head Lion and gives him a calming smile. The Graceful One believes in giving people second chances. The Lions don't agree, but they admire her for it.

The Sleaze pushes himself to the long table and stares down at a plate of ladyfingers. He wears goggles because he can't see all that well, but they're a really high prescription, so he has trouble distinguishing between people who put up with him and people who'd enjoy nothing more than throwing him down a well. When it comes to The Sleaze, those are the only two kinds of people there are. The Sleaze doesn't realize this. He wishes more than anything that he could be a Human.

But The Humans don't like him because he does things like grab them where they don't want to be grabbed; he whispers sleazy comments into their ears when no one is looking; when The Humans expect him to behave like a human, he says things like, "Don't get skittish on me now." The Sleaze earnestly believes he's suave. He sincerely believes he's charming. He is unaware of his stench.

The Sleaze looks up from the ladyfingers and makes eye contact with The Human on his left. "My dick is bigger than yours," The Sleaze says and he's shocked when The Human laughs at him. Then The Human simply walks away. The Humans turned The Sleaze into a punchline a year ago and since then, they've found him much easier to deal with.

The Sleaze spots the punch bowl across the room and moves towards it, but he trips because it's hard not to when a foot is in your mouth. He stumbles, falls into the table, grabs the edge of the lace tablecloth and pulls it and a tray of charcuterie to the floor with him. The Graceful One walks over and helps him up. He stands in front of her and adjusts his goggles. Once they're settled on his face, he reaches out and grabs her left breast, turns it like a volume dial, and says, "Honk! Honk!" The room goes silent. The Humans are past the point of grace.

The head Lion peels himself off the wallpaper and pads softly over to The Sleaze, who is now laughing at his own joke. The Lion flicks The Sleaze in the forehead and The Sleaze's goggles go flying across the room and into the punch bowl. Red liquid splatters the walls. The room sighs collectively. That used to be really good punch. "We can make more," The Lion says. Then he smashes The Sleaze into the ground, scoops him up, and molds him into a ball, much the way you would a ball of dough. Soon The Sleaze is a perfectly round ball that The Lion holds easily in the flat of his paw. The Lion walks quietly over to the open window and flings the dough ball out into the moat below. He closes the window and turns to the room. "Some simply can't be helped," The Graceful One says. "We need more punch," The Lion replies.

2011-08-10T06:00:00.001-05:00

THE FRINGE FESTIVAL IS COMING!!

Dear Alert Power Love Reader,
Hello! For the past few months, I've been lucky enough to be a part of an ensemble that's creating and will be performing a play for the Chicago Fringe Festival. I hope you can come out to see it. You can find out all info on the play itself, as well as how to buy tickets to our play and the festival on our website: http://www.themovingdayplay.com/home.htm.

Here are details:

All shows at The Dream Theatre
556 W. 18th Street
Chicago

Thursday, September 1, 8:30pm
Saturday, September 3, 5:30pm
Monday, September 5, 4:00pm
Friday, September 9, 10:00pm
Saturday, September 10, 7:00pm

It will be epic, mostly because I will be on stage without pages in my hand and without a music stand in front of me, which is a drastic departure from my comfort zone and now my head hurts so I have to go sit down.

2011-08-08T06:00:00.000-05:00

This is what happens when you work with amazing humans.

2011-06-20T06:00:00.002-05:00

NOT SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION; WE FIRED OUR MARKETING DEPARTMENT

In one way or another, I'm telling a whole bunch of stories this summer. Hope you can make it out for all or some of these events, Alert Power Love Reader. Don't have all dates for all events. Updates will follow. Thank you for your support.

Fillet of Solo Festival--Performing an original show with Scott Whitehair
Where: Heartland Studio Theatre, 7016 N. Glenwood Avenue, Chicago
When: Saturday, 7/23, 8:30pm
Friday, 7/29, 8:30pm
Saturday, 7/30, 7pm
Thursday, 8/4, 8:30pm
Tickets: $10
More information here.

We Live Here--10-minute piece in this full-length play produced by Theatre Seven
When: Opens 8/4
More information here.

This Much Is True--straight-up storytelling
When: Tuesday, 8/9
Where: Hopleaf, 5148 N. Clark
Free
More information here.

Chicago Fringe Festival--I'm honored to be one-fifth of ToddsBurn Productions
When: Festival dates 9/1-9/11
Where: Pilsen
More information here.

2011-06-11T06:00:00.004-05:00

IT'S ALL THE SAME ONLY THE NAMES'LL CHANGE

Enough about your issues. There's crime fighting to be done. As you may know, Alert Power Love Reader, our former goobernor is on trial for being a Colossal Dickhead. This is a watershed moment in American judiciariness because if His Hairness is convicted, it will set a precedent and henceforth all Dickheads will be eligible for prosecution and most importantly, it will expand opportunities for those of us in the crimer fighting field, which is why I'm currently building another wing on my estate so look for an invitation to the party to celebrate that!

However, I'm not gonna waste my time waiting around for some "judicial process" to make its way through "the courts" (patience: Not My Thing), I'm gonna start prosecuting Dickheads now. Technically, my job description doesn't include the prosecution of crimers, I'm actually just the super hero who catches them, but I have an expansive skill set and we're in the midst of budget cuts, so I've taken on some extra responsibilities.

At The Office of Super Heroes--which looks much like the Bat Cave, not incidentally, and I don't mean the Bat Cave from the movies of Batman, I mean the Bat Cave from the TV series, complete with that rockin computer that had lots of lights but which seemed to have only one function, to spit out very small pieces of paper, one at a time--we have The List of Dickheads thumb tacked to the cork board in the kitchen.

I'm not gonna lie, we've kinda been treading water ever since that bin Laden thing--I mean, Navy SEALS, who knew those guys were out and about? And don't think that whole thing didn't throw our marketing department for a loop, we've been trying to expand into the global market for years, but we keep getting sidetracked by McDonald's French fries and now do you see what happens when you don't consume a diet of green leafy vegetables, boys and girls? Right! You miss out on global expansion and Dickhead kills. Trust me, this will be much discussed at the Annual Conference of Super Heroes (November, Vegas, I'm giving the keynote address: How to Stop Picking Your Cuticles in Three Easy Steps).

Number One on The List of Dickheads is: The Assumption Pumpkins. Dose guys. I think you're quite familiar with the Assumption Pumpkins--they're the punks who think they always know why you're doing what you're doing, even though you never tell them and they never ask. Also, they are actual pumpkins, which is why, taped next to The List of Dickheads on the cork board in the kitchen of The Office of Super Heroes, there is a recipe for pumpkin pie. I ask you--can the Navy SEALS take down a Dickhead and then make a nice pie out of him/her/it? Well, probably. But they have to deal with that whole "code of conduct" thing and, like, Congress, so good luck at the next pie contest, boys!

I have a personal problem with the Assumption Pumpkins, mostly because I'm not one to state my motivations clearly, except for that whole skywriting phase I went through in high school, so I frequently find out the Assumption Pumpkins have spread salacious rumors about me and this makes me mad because I can spread my own salacious rumors about me, thank you very much.

While drinking my coffee in the kitchen of The Office of Super Heroes, I write my name next to the Assumption Pumpkins, thereby alerting my colleagues that this was my mission. I'm not the world's best baker of pies, however, so I'm gonna have to cross that bridge when I get to it.

I decide to invade the Assumption Pumpkins's hideout on a Monday evening, after watching a rerun of "Gossip Girl," which is one of my all-time favorite shows because there are cool clothes, all of which seem to fit awkwardly on the characters, as though they're lined with whipped cream that the actors are contractually obligated not to disturb, and also I have a wild fascination with Chuck Bass, which I simply cannot fathom because if I knew Chuck Bass in Real Life, I'd have to eat him for breakfast. I don't mean that to be a sexual innuendo, I mean I would literally crush him and sprinkle him over my eggs. Entitled white American men get on my last nerve. But apparently not when they're fictional characters on the Upper East Side.

Enough about me. What do you think about me? So after "Gossip Girl," I head over to the Assumption Pumpkins's hideout, which is located in the back room of The Grafton. I'm a big fan of the Irish and beer so The Grafton isn't a hard place to be. Plus, they have food there, which I'm also a big fan of.

There's a fire going when I look down through the grate of the ventilation duct, which is conveniently located in the middle of the ceiling of the back room. I'm happy I'm not directly over the fireplace because catching on fire is one way to blow a top secret ops mission and let's face it, The Office of Super Heroes cannot handle any missteps here. We have a budget, you know. And skyrocketing expenses. You can't buy these tights just anywhere, m'kay?

The unfortunate thing is, I forgot my glasses, so everything is kinda blurry and also, you know that cool telescope thing that Matt Damon uses in "The Bourne Ultimatum" when he's in one building and looking across the city into Landy's office--it kinda looks like the thing jewelers use to see chips in diamonds--I'm talking about the telescope thingy here, not Landy's office--and this thing is so precise Matt Damon can actually read the words on a folder that's being placed into a briefcase? Well, I don't have that.

All I have is my own proficiency at squinting, but squinting kinda makes me tense, which makes my shoulders cramp up, which gives me a charley horse, which I have to stretch out immediately and also makes me grunt because charley horses hurt, and this sudden movement causes me to fall through the ventilation grate on to the floor below and my grunt causes the secret meeting of the Assumption Pumpkins to suddenly turn and look at me and this is why I'm really thankful the ventilation grate is not placed directly over the fireplace.

I'm briefly stunned, but I'm also a super hero, so I jump to my feet, ready to defend America's honor. The Assumption Pumpkins continue to eat their artichoke dip and sip their imported Belgian beers.

"No Guinness?" I say, pulling my machete from its sheath at my side. Incidentally, my machete is not in its sheath at my side because I left it on the table at home, right next to my glasses.

"The Irish have drunk all the Guinness," one of the Assumption Pumpkins says. I know this to be a blatant lie because Guinness flows from never ending streams, which are located throughout the world. I suspect this lying Assumption Pumpkin is the leader. This is because he is wearing a headdress with the word "leader" embroidered in gold string across the front.

I glance around the room. The rest of the Assumption Pumpkins are looking at me--looking me up and down--no doubt impressed with my orange tights and flaming orange cape, no doubt jealous of my gleaming tiara. Thought bubbles pop up around their pumpkin heads. Most of them have forgotten to turn off their ovens. One is dreading the test results he was supposed to get yesterday but which have been delayed because the clinic lost power. Nice job, ComEd.

I whip out my metaphor gun and make a sweeping motion around the room. The thought bubbles all pop and disappear. The leader squints at me out of the corner of his eye. "You haven't come for dinner, then?"

"You're quick, Pumpkin," I say. Sometimes, when I'm in super hero mode, I talk like Clint Eastwood. It's a gift. "And not all Irish drink." I know this because some Irish are no longer alive and I've been to the afterlife and--spoiler alert!--there are no bars in the afterlife. You can smoke cloud feces, though, which provides the same high as a bottle of Jameson. Anyway, I don't know why I'm on the Irish thing. Defending my ancestors is not today's mission.

"Not all pumpkins make good pies," the leader of the Assumption Pumpkins says. Clearly, I'm making an I'm-gonna-make-a-pie-outta-you face, which is not the best approach to this secret ops mission. I shake my metaphor gun.

For the record, I love my metaphor gun. You should get one, Alert Power Love Reader. They're on sale at Target this week. Metaphor guns look like water guns, but instead of squirting water, they squirt magic cinnamon dust, which has multiple effects depending on which setting you choose: you can rearrange facial features; you can recalibrate brain waves; you can apply allergies; you can soften hearts. It's a multifaceted weapon that I invented and patented ten years ago and only use occasionally because the quality of a human can be seen in how she wields her power.

"All reports suggest you have been assumptioning cruel things about the staff of The Office of Super Heroes," I say to the leader, flicking the safety off my metaphor gun. "I'm here to put an end to that."

The leader of the Assumption Pumpkins looks around the room. The rest of the Assumption Pumpkins are staring at me. Little known fact: I used to hang out with the Assumption Pumpkins. Get a little tequila in them, and they're fun as hell. In addition, I have sat around campfires with quite a few of these pumpkins and shared some truly intimate memories. We don't talk anymore.

"Well," the leader says, "hard to know what to think when no communiques are transmitted."
"So you make shit up? That's lame," I say.
"You make shit up."
"Yes, but I have an MFA in fiction writing, so I'm morally obligated to make shit up. It was a condition of my loans."

I don't tell the leader I've already paid off my loans because I am remarkably financially savvy.

"Well, we had to fill the vacuum with something," the leader says. I hear the thought bubbles of the rest of the Assumption Pumpkins pop open with the same sound those bits of irrelevant information used to pop on the screen during music videos on VH-1's Pop-Up Video show. Do they still have videos these days? I metaphor gunned my TV about 10 years ago and now it's the world's biggest ball of twine. A real tourist attraction, by the way, please see the aforementioned remarkably financially savvy comment.

"You're manipulators," I tell the leader of the Assumption Pumpkins.
"You give us too much credit," he says.

Probably. I flip my metaphor gun to heart softener and start shooting. I blanket the room with magic cinnamon dust. The Assumption Pumpkins look not too surprised. I suspect they assumed the worst anyway. I wait for the dust to settle, then look around the room. On a table next to me, there is a plate of chips and partially attacked artichoke dip. "You gonna eat that?" I ask the Assumption Pumpkin nearest to it. "It's just that we kinda missed you," he says. "You stopped coming to campfires."

"You stopped listening," I say. I plunge a chip in the artichoke dip and toss it in the air. I catch it in my mouth expertly because in addition to being a super hero, I am also a top-tier member of the Morris Brother Barnum Bungling Circus and this move is kinda like what I'm known for on the circus circuit.

"Sometimes super heroes and pumpkins just move on," the leader says. "Sometimes it's just that. No malice intended."

This is a good point, although it means I have to release my long-held grudge, which I have been cultivating with great care for quite some time. Releasing this grudge is a double-edged sword: it will make me 10 pounds lighter, which is good because I have that recurring role on that soap opera; but it's also not good because it will leave me with a lot of time on my hands. I have closets full of Jameson, so time is sometimes not my friend.

I place my metaphor gun against my right temple and pull the trigger. A quick insuck of breath later, I tell the Assumption Pumpkins that I'm buying dinner. We gather around the fireplace with our drinks and our headdresses and our weapons and our thought bubbles and we swap stories about inside-out socks and documentary film making.

I decide not to make pies out of the Assumption Pumpkins.

2011-06-01T06:00:00.000-05:00

I'M A SACK OF BROKEN EGGS I ALWAYS HAVE AN UNMADE BED

I'm trudging across the parking lot like a zombie, not because I am a zombie, not today anyway, but because my pyramid of bricks is shackled to my ankle. I have an impressive pyramid of bricks. You do too, Alert Power Love Reader. Your pyramid is comprised of many bricks: a brick for indecision, another for self-doubt, another for regret, for shame, for fear, for that time in 4th grade when you called Sally Googapalooza fat so you could be cool in front of the cool kids, but Sally heard you and never spoke to you again and it didn't help that the cool kids never liked you anyway because they thought you were fat, and you were, and still are, and that's about 30 bricks right there. You have one Sally Googapalooza experience in each stage of your life, so at this point, you're hauling around a hell of a lot of bricks and it'd be nice if you could count that as strength training, maybe get some muscle tone out of the deal, but that's not how the pyramid of bricks works.

I have been told by a very serious source that I will grow old alone, and this is my weightiest brick, which balances precariously on the top of my pyramid, which kinda makes it an odd looking pyramid, I guess, kinda like a pyramid wearing a sun bonnet, or a geometry puzzle, or like something you'd see on Sesame Street in the shape episode, which concerned parents would tune into expecting enlightened conversation about body image, which of course they wouldn't get, they'd get a bunch of triangles and rectangles and then they'd have to figure out how to handle the body image conversation with their kids themselves and to avoid that, they'd write scathing letters to Obama about his disastrous choices in teleprompters, "You're a reader, not a leader," they'd proclaim, until some well-meaning Democrat would bash them in the head with a mallet.

For the record, we here at Power Love HQ do not advocate violence as a means to conflict resolution, despite the fact that we have several mallets on staff.

Anyhoodle--you have issues. Me too. I prefer to shackle mine to my ankle and drag them around in public because I usually don't have pockets and I rarely carry a purse. It's hard enough just to get pants on in the morning, let alone remember to carry receptacles with me and this may or may not have something to do with my issues, but nonetheless, here I am, dragging my pyramid of bricks across the parking lot, minivanned families stopping to stare at me as I do, me grunting every five paces, wishing I would just take the time to exercise more often, dammit--this is brick #42, you'll find it third row center--so I smile and wave, but the minivanners don't acknowledge me, which may or may not have something to do with the fact that I'm not wearing pants.

Into the forest I go. The trees don't have pyramids of bricks, because trees have neither issues nor ankles, so while they're basically empathetic to my situation, they can't fully understand it. "Humans," I hear a maple say to an elm and in that instant, I realize I don't actually know the difference between a maple and an elm. I don't even know what poison ivy looks like. Saw the movie, though, it sucked.

I trudge on. "Trudge on" spoken quickly sounds to me like "truncheon," which sounds to me like a medieval torture device or a really bad heavy metal band, so you can imagine my mood at this point. I imagine that there is another me operating in a parallel universe and the other me is making all the right decisions and getting all her hopes fulfilled and I kinda hate her because she's probably not getting mosquito bites on her ass right now, but also, there's something inherently negative about hating yourself, even your other self in a parallel universe, so I instead turn my hate towards someone who deserves it, like the minivanners. This makes me feel much better because as you know, Alert Power Love Reader, judging others is the first step on the path to enlightenment.

Finally I make it to The Waterfall, who, like the trees, has neither issues nor ankles and so can empathize with my situation but can't actually understand it. Band name: The Lucky Fuckers.

I crawl inside The Waterfall. I have to yank the shackle around my ankle in order to pull my pyramid of bricks away from the crashing water. It's okay for the mist to hit the pyramid of bricks, but shit, man, don't get that thing soaked because you will live to regret it, trust me on this one, Alert Power Love Reader, you simply don't have the disposition to handle a soaked pyramid of bricks. I do, of course, I'm far more perfect than you know, but we're all about the PSA here at Power Love HQ, so: you're welcome.

The Waterfall falls. It sounds like it's humming. I close my eyes. "Act of grace," I whisper to myself. "Act of grace. Act of grace. Act of grace." After a while, my mantra starts to sound like "sack of mace," and that appeals to me, probably because I've been inundated with violent images that today's society deems socially acceptable, so I train my precision vision on the canyon outside The Waterfall. I've come here today to get rid of the bricks, but I've tried this before and even when I've walked out of the forest, unshackled and light, I end up jumping in my car, rolling down the highway, turning up the music, feeling happy and hydrated and then I look in the rear view mirror and there on my back seat, what do I see? My pyramid of bricks, luxuriating like a spoiled cat.

Today I'm heartbroken and determined, less trying to unload, more trying to survive, and I can't help but think if I don't get rid of my pyramid of bricks soon, I'm gonna get sucked under by the undertow, which is quite a feat in the landlocked Midwest, so maybe I'd make headlines, but only until some other fucker gets sucked under by a magic dragon and then, even in the after-the-undertow life, I'd still be a nonentity.

"You should write a book and call it Self-Indulgent Bullshit," The Waterfall says.
"I like you better when you sing 'Amazing Grace'," I tell it.
"Hey, I don't come over to your place and play DJ, do I?"

True. I haven't invited The Waterfall to my place since that disastrous dinner party with Kid Rock. In my defense, I really didn't think break dancing and juggling were mutually exclusive. They don't give you a rule book, you know. Plus, up until that point, I was considered proficient with flaming swords.

"I was hoping I could leave my pyramid of bricks here," I tell The Waterfall. "Maybe you could erode them a bit? Perhaps to the point where I could at least keep them in my pocket?"
"You're not wearing pants."
"Neither are you."
"When was the last time you looked at your pyramid of bricks?" The Waterfall asks.

I have to think about this for a bit. I have many times glared out of the corner of my eye at my pyramid. Occasionally I zen out and can see it in my peripheral vision. But in terms of straight-on, direct eye contact, I'd have to say that's not an activity I'm particularly fond of.

"Last Tuesday," I say.
"Bullshit: Brick #13, row 2, second from left," The Waterfall says.

In addition to my mind-numbingly awesome proficiency with flaming swords, I am also a world class bullshitter, particularly when it comes to me talking to me, which is how I spend most of my time. "I don't want to look at it," I mumble, embarrassed. "I'm afraid it's gonna fall on my head."
"Maybe it won't."
"But maybe it will."
"But maybe it won't."
Band name: Stubborn Motherfuckers.
I say, "But if it does, no one's around to help me out from under it."
"What am I, invisible over here? I'm around." The Waterfall snaps.

It's true--The Waterfall is literally around me. It's splashing in front of me, pools of it are collecting at my feet, rivulets of it are slinking down the wall behind me. "Are you suggesting I use my laser precision vision to erode my pyramid of bricks myself?" I ask.
"Yes."

Just between you and me, Alert Power Love Reader, sometimes I exaggerate slightly, so I'm not altogether confident I possess the laser precision vision I brag about. Even so, I don't have a better solution. I glance quickly at my pyramid of bricks, then turn away. Good news--the world does not swallow me whole. I turn slowly and really look at it.

It's less red than I thought, more purple. And kinda wonky in its balance, like someone tossed each brick on a pile without caring where it landed. The individual bricks are held together by what looks like grape jelly. It does indeed appear to be wearing a sun bonnet.

The Waterfall falls. The trees hum. I want my pyramid of bricks to disappear, but they don't. Instead, they seem to lose mass from the inside, until there is still a definable pyramid, but one that is more like a triangle of balloons in brick shapes. I tug my shackle. It feels like an ankle bracelet. I take a few steps. My pyramid of bricks still follows me, but I don't have to trudge now. I do a quick kick-ball-change maneuver. Still there, but I'm nonetheless moving easily. I roll out a series of Rockette chorus line kicks. Perfect. My pyramid of balloon bricks settles in comfortably by my side.

"I'll take requests now," The Waterfall says.
I stretch out in The Waterfall's puddles and close my eyes. "Thank you," I say to The Waterfall.

The Waterfall clears its throat and begins to hum "Amazing Grace." After a while the trees join in, and everything else is quiet.

2011-05-28T06:00:00.000-05:00

AND GRACE WILL BRING ME HOME

Dave Myers is 85-years old. Dave Myers was married for 59 years and 10 months. He has six kids, 12 grandkids. He walks four miles everyday because if he sits at home alone he gets down. Dave Myers was a paratrooper in the war, a supervisor at the factory. His niece lives in Sedona, Arizona, where there's real hiking--in the mountains--not like here, in the Midwest, even though here in the Midwest, if you hike, you still gotta be prepared--proper shoes, water--because it's still Nature and you gotta respect Nature. Dave Myers isn't wearing proper footwear when he tells me this. He grew up around here--central Illinois--so this is just a walk in the park for him.

Dave Myers's wife died last year. "Every morning," Dave Myers says, "God and I and my wife have a talk. Then I go for my walk." The Lord's been good to me, Dave Myers says. One of his kids lives in Mobile, Alabama, wants him to come visit. Another kid lives in Alaska, drives a bus. The Alaska kid is the one who keeps the family together--calls everyone while he's in between stops on his route, disseminates the family news among the family. The Lord's been good to me, Dave Myers says.

"The Lord likes you, too," Dave Myers says to me. I tell him I'm not so sure. Some days, like today, I tell Dave Myers, I'm really not so sure. "You just talked to an old man for half an hour," Dave Myers tells me. "You have a kind heart. The Lord is good to people with a kind heart." I have my doubts--about the Lord, about my heart. Dave Myers sees it on my face.

Dave Myers rides 30 miles on his bike every now and again. Sometimes he doesn't bring water. "Not good to push yourself like that," Dave Myers tells me. "Did it last week. Ended up by the boats on the river. Man invited me on his boat. Gave me water. Sat down and had a chat with him while I drank it. Sometimes people help you out when you don't expect it. Like I said, the Lord's been good to me."

2011-04-14T06:00:00.000-05:00

Thank you.

2011-03-22T06:00:00.000-05:00

ONCE THE SHOW GETS STARTED IT'S BOUND TO BE A SIGHT TO SEE

Here's what I do when I'm alone: I pull the silver screen down from my ceiling--I have silver screens throughout my estate, but the one in the great hallway, the one that pulls down from the mosaic ceiling, that's the one I like best. There's no seating--it is a hallway, after all--just a long tunnel of portraits of famous people throughout history, none of whom I know, all of whom have penciled-in mustaches under their noses, which has seriously decreased their market value, but it was a fun party.

At the end of the great hallway is a beautiful window. It's cut glass, like those famously beautiful cut glass bowls you can get in the countryside in Ireland, but my windows are windows, not bowls. The windows open out. They have latches. They rattle when the wind blows, so I keep them open.

On my silver screen: my fantasies. Not the lurid ones. The ones I tell myself in order to round out the life experiences, the narrative I construct to put some sort of cohesive structure on what is otherwise a confusing mess. The fantasies are grounded in reality only so far as there is truth in a single gesture or a simple smile. After that, everything else is constructed: You smiled at me so clearly you're so consumed with passion for me, you'd change your life to accommodate all that furious lust. That unreturned phone call? You were in the Amazon, this close to finding the rare flower that, when mixed with ocean water and lavender, will activate a potion that will simultaneously cure cancer and continuously fill power vacuums in fragile governments with clear-thinking, peaceful humans. Plus, there's no cell reception in the Amazon because AT&T owns the air.

On this particular day, I pull down my silver screen in my great hallway and as I'm about to ring the bell so Horace the Butler can bring me some popcorn not buttered, my fantasies start projecting on the silver screen. And then the screen starts melting. And then the fantasies start rearranging themselves into Reality, which really sucks. And now that smile is just a smile, that unreturned call switches its status to forgotten, the Amazon is the pink section on a two-dimensional map. The smell of fantasy burning into reality is like burning rubber in cotton-ball humidity. Interestingly, the air tastes like copper. Blood tastes like copper. Probably not a coincidence, I think.

I run down the great hallway, picking up speed so I can make the jump, and once I'm at the opened cut glass windows, I launch into the air. I superman through the row of trees just outside the windows. The squirrels look at me like they've see it all before. They have. This is a frequent party trick of mine. Because I'm known for Gatsby-like parties, I'm always looking for The Next Fun Thing, because after champagne and the monkey and the dolphins in the pool, what else entices the fickle to attend?

It's usually after I clear the first row of trees that I fall to my almost-death, and the squirrels are aware of this, so they reach their paws inside the window--their paws extend like Inspector Gadget's limbs--and when they reach the now-abandoned bowl of popcorn, they latch on and pull and voila! There they are in the trees, munching popcorn, watching the movie of my almost-death.

Ha! Ha! Joke's on them! This is not some random, impetuous action I flew into because I have too much time on my hands and too easy access to hallucinogenic drugs. This is A Mission. I am officially Running Away and I am highly motivated.

From behind me, coming out of the now-burning silver screen, I can hear the yelps and gasps and ebbs and flows of all the conversations I've ever had. I hear the crinkle of the screen's edges burning. There's the sound of mocking laughter from the squirrels. I like my fantasies because in reality, I'm kinda a loser.

I stretch out and flying is like swimming, but without the arm strokes and the weird pattern of breathing. And no water, obviously. So maybe not really like swimming. Below me is the rose garden. Now the corn maze. Now the shrub maze with the Robinson Crusoe tree house. I am disastrously rich.

I crash into the peak of one of the many houses on my property. This hurts. I have a scar across the middle of my forehead and sometimes when I crash into the peak of one of the many houses on my estate's property, the scar snaps open and herds of doves fly out of my forehead. As I'm clinging to the roof (New shingles! Took care of that before winter! Conscientious homeowner!), as my fingers are clearly slipping, as I hear the squirrels' mocking laughter, as I'm just about to sigh thankfully that my scar is locked tight today, it suddenly bursts open, and there are the herds of doves, flying out of my head and into the sky.

"A herd of doves? It's not a herd."
I have to look around to locate the voice. This is difficult because I'm dangling off the roof with only four fingers for contact. Good thing I got that Spiderman sticky glue at ToysRUs the other day. That stuff was worth $5.50!

The dove prances from my shoulder to the peak of the roof, where my fingers continue to slip. I've always thought it'd be kinda fun to dangle from a Ferris wheel. If I survive this, I'm totally building a Ferris wheel in the north quadrant of the estate.

"A doodle," I say.
"A doodle of doves? Are you kidding?"
"It's alliterative."
"It's made up."
"So?"
"So that's the problem. Quit making shit up."
"I don't think we need to use profanity." You'll note, Alert Power Love Reader, that as I'm aging I am also maturing. "Fuck that," the dove says. He perches on the peak of the roof and extends a wing. I grab it and he pulls me up next to him. "The laughter will disappear in a few weeks. It's all in your head anyway."

I hear a kaboom! and then watch as a blossom of orange fire bursts out my cut glass windows. My face feels like a giant hairdryer just exploded on it. "I implanted telepathic chips in my pinkies for occasions like this," I tell the dove. "It's my emergency back-up plan. I think what solution I want implemented and the chip sends the orders to the house. Sprinkler system. Flour on an oven fire. Blankets on a burning suit. Air raid siren. Tornado warning." "Let it burn," the dove says. So I do.

2011-02-25T06:00:00.006-06:00

YOUR INFECTION PLEASE I HAVEN'T GOT ALL NIGHT

In the morning she'll slip out of bed, get dressed quietly, and walk out the door. She won't lock it behind her. When you wake up, you hope she's gone for coffee. When she's not back two hours later, you know she's gone.

You drive. You remember her mentioning New Mexico and Arizona. You remember she hates the cold, but likes the seasons. You head northwest. It's gloomy. You hope she hasn't left the country. You pass one exit after another. Speedway. McDonald's. Gas--Food--Lodging. Truck stops. Holiday Inn. If she's gone to Europe, you'll have to learn to drive on the Autobahn. Or on the left. You'll have to ask for help. You think she set it up like that, it's just like her. "But you chose to do it," she'd say and you wouldn't be able to argue, because she'd be right. You hate her for that. But right now you are driving across the country for that.

Nebraska is greener than you thought. And hillier. You can't remember what she looks like. You tell yourself that's ridiculous, you've lived with her face next to yours for years. But now you realize you made up a face, you made up a voice. Then you put that face and that voice on a mirage and that mirage fell asleep next to you every night.

You do, however, remember her right index finger. You can see it clearly--long and thin, with a chunky ring around it and usually some ostentatious color on the nail--and you know this for a fact because she was always pointing that finger at you. You know it for a fact.

Except, after a few more exits, you begin to question even that. The Dennys have switched to Cracker Barrels. The frost has turned to dew. The once polluted air is now filled with the smell of livestock. You used to fall asleep with your head on the small of her back. You never asked if that annoyed her.

You remember the second you fell in love with her. She handed you a beer. First. There were other people around, but she handed the beer to you. And that's what you were looking for--someone to pick you out of the crowd, someone to give you the prize first. It didn't really matter who the prize came from. It doesn't matter even now. You wonder when she realized this.

You remember the fights. Screaming in the car. Slamming the bedroom door. Smashing the wine glass against the wall. You remember how your eyeballs burned you were so mad. You remember retaliating, then looking around you--at the empty passenger's seat, the empty bedroom, the empty kitchen. It's not possible you were fighting with yourself, that would make you crazy. Crazy people don't recognize their crazy.

You head north, to Montana. You're following the scent of her perfume. It invades the air. At a gas station in an empty field, you ask the old man at the counter if he smells it. He says all he can smell is cow shit. You keep driving.

You stop at a bar in Missoula. You think it should be peopled with locals, but everyone looks like a tourist. You remember how she'd laugh, loud and inappropriately, at parties. You remember that sharp tone she'd use to put people off. You remember standing in the living room, in front of the framed mirror, explaining the negative aspects of her abruptness, how she needed to watch that, how she embarrassed herself in front of others, they really didn't know what to make of her, she made them uncomfortable. You remember looking in the framed mirror, watching yourself talk to yourself.

At night, you wrap the pillow case around your neck like a scarf. It smells like her. You won't take off your paisley collared shirt because that smells like her too. You ache for something of hers to hold on to, but you can't remember what was hers.

In a small town just over the border into Washington, you're walking out of a diner and you see her. She's walking across the street, in a crowd, but you know without a doubt it's her. You can smell it.

You run. The crowd disperses. You can't see faces or index fingers or anything except the blind need that has crawled out of you and is pulling you forward. You grab her by the hand. You pull her into you. You wrap your arms around her and breathe her in and hold her while you hold your breath, until her smell is absorbed into your bone marrow. You lean back, to smile, and she disappears, like mist.

You drive.

2011-02-21T06:00:00.011-06:00

PALM TREES FLAT BROKE DISEASE

The snow is melting. You're welcome. It was a difficult negotiation and lucky I won that Pulitzer for investigative reporting, because that's how I simultaneously negotiated our way out of Snow Hell, and then also took perfectly accurate notes with my waterproof pen so that we can live in a free and open society of transparency and love.

It was last week, when we were in yet another Chicago Weather Time Warp. You don't remember because now it's 40 degrees and that's doable, so you've blocked out The Other Time because it's bad and you don't have the coping skills for that and also, you're a colossal pothead.

But there was a time when snowdrifts were as tall as the Tower and, basically, winter came into our home and made itself comfortable. Just because it happens every year doesn't make it right. So I'm sitting on my throne, protecting My Parking Spot. Armed gunmen are stationed in the turrets of the towers atop the snowdrifts to my left and right. I have my fly swatter at my side. I'm wearing spurs. My duster hangs on a hook frozen to The Left Drift. I don't know where my car went, but this is my spot now.

My spurs rustle so I pull out my kaleidoscope and peek beyond the boundary of My Parking Spot. The kaleidoscope shrugs its shoulders, but I'm like, dude--you gotta look AROUND (slow on the uptake, this guy--something about acid, the toxicity of the early 70s, and crazy Uncle George), so the kaleidoscope looks around and then I see it too: from a distance, it looks like a tumbleweed rolling toward us. Except everything in this time warp is bright white, hence my diamond sunglasses, so really, it's more like a snowball rolling towards us, but I may change it back to a tumbleweed because I'm wearing spurs.

The kaleidoscope slowly moves back the closer the snowball gets. I pull out my fly swatter. I hear the clicks of the armed gunmen around me. If that snowball gets too close, he will be showered with flags of every color--silk flags, thank you very much, imported from my fabric factory in Italy. I suspect the smart ass in Sector 8 has loaded his armed gun with spitballs, but that's not a battle I'm willing to fight right now.

The snowball is inside garrison lines. A quick flick of my fly swatter and the entire compound is at the ready. I remove myself from my throne and swagger out to meet him. My spurs are playing "Kashmir" because I can't get that song outta my head, it's almost like it's following me, which was something I once wished for, but now, in actuality, it's really rather tedious and it hurts my brain.

This is all Captain Hook's fault, I TOLD him not to use that for his entry song (Led Zeppelin is OFF LIMITS for entry songs, m'kay--WE ALL AGREED TO THIS), but does that guy listen? Deal with your Peter Pan issues, dude.

Snow flicks me in the forehead, "Pay attention, space lady."
"I'm a cowboy fashionista today, ass."
For the record, it's very disconcerting to be flicked out of a daydream by a weather mass.
"Where's your hat?" Snow asks.
I'm about to say, "Up your ass," but that would make two ass-es in a row, which is bad form. To be honest, Snow is another battle I'm not willing to fight. I'm feeling particularly fightless lately and really, I just wanna watch travel shows on PBS and be around people who are nice to me.

I look around My Parking Spot. My hat is off behind my throne. It's getting warmer so I don't really need it, and sometimes my hat and I need a little space from each other. No, we're not breaking up. This is actually a healthy move for us. Our therapist said so.

"Over there," I say, pointing to my hat. It's a fedora with a silk and chiffon train that hits at my ankles. Sometimes it gets tangled in battle.

Snow senses my defeat. "Sit?"
"Please."
My assistant runs to The Neighbor's Parking Spot and removes a dining room chair. It's shorter than my throne because I don't allow weather masses to sit higher than me in My Parking Spot. I regain my composure.

"How may we help you today?" I say.
"By next week, this is all gonna melt," Snow tells me furtively.
"Uh-huh. Oh. Hmmmm."
"I suggest inflatable furniture."
"Do you?"
"Ikea. Cheap. Easy to set up. Directions in pictures, no pesky words."

Band name: Pesky Words. See us at various literary fests around the city. We also do performance art gigs. We just stand still for the 45-minute set and say nothing. We'll need a private space to prepare beforehand. We are artists.

"Dibs get called off when Snow disappears," I tell Snow.
"That's funny. I never disappear. During July, I lurk in the sewers."
"Gross."
"Not as gross as the humans who fill 'em up."
"There's humans in the sewers?"
"Have you recently had a lobotomy?"
I don't tell him about the calamity in Cancun. That's between me and Cancun's intelligence agents.

"Anyway," Snow says, "the market's in inflatable furniture. Jump in now while you can afford it, you'll be sitting on easy street in no time."
I don't like his metaphor. As you and I both know, Alert Power Love Reader, if I sat on easy street, I'd probably get run over.

"You've come to My Parking Spot to offer me a flimsy business deal?"
"They're not gonna keep dibs at bay forever. We've already headed down the slope. When the torrential rains come, we'll need--NEED--to protect our parking spots. When it floods, where's my spot? Oh, right here where I marked it WITH MY INFLATABLE END TABLE. When the sun slashes us like a sword and we all instantaneously erupt into sunburned tomato heads, where will we park? You guessed it--"
"OK. Thanks. I get it. Your idea is stupid and you're a hustler."
"That's untrue. I'm an artful salesweathermass."
"I never understand the pictures in those Ikea directions. It's like stick figures holding stick drawings and I always feel like I'm putting together a table when I should be putting together a book shelf."
"That's because you've smoked your depth perception out your ears. Listen to me: Get in now while it's good."

I stand. The armed gunmen are waiting for my signal. The ass in Sector 8 is indeed loading his armed armament with spitballs. About 99.999% of my me-ness is telling me to whip out my blow dryer and melt Snow's face off. But I'm angling for the Pulitzer of Peace to sit next to my investigative journaling award because I have this handmade shelf from Bora Bora--Wow was that an operation! Thank god for riot gear and parkour!--and it would add balance and peace to the universe.

I wave off the armed gunmen. From Sector 8 I hear, "Aw fuck that...Shut up, dude, she'll hear you...Well fuck it, what a waste of spitballs." I'll devise a plan for spitball retention and storage this evening. For now though, I say, "Snow, it's been nice having you. I have other matters to attend to now, however. I'll have my team look over your business proposal and reply to you shortly."

Snow stands up. He walks out to The Road. "You never thought you'd spend five bucks on a fancy coffee drink, but now you can't live without it. Opportunity."
I wait because I kinda wanna blow his stubby legs out from under him with a swift roundhouse kick. But I don't, because I have to return my neighbor's dining room chair. "Good day to you, sir," I say and Snow walks away, already looking into drifts down the road, ready for the next sucker.

You see how I did that, Alert Power Love Reader? I didn't have to go to battle. Apparently, humans do this all the time. It's called "Working Things Out." I think we can all agree it's a somewhat disconcerting option--let's face it, some weather masses NEED to be vaporized--but it's worth keeping around as an option.

2011-02-03T06:00:00.004-06:00

MY NEW FOUND FAITH AND MY BROKEN HEART

Because we're all about the public service announcement here at Power Love HQ, we feel compelled to tell you that a blizzard just regurgitated on Chicago.

That means I have to defer my Implementing Legislation Days. Day. I dropped it down to one day. I'm really busy. And anyway, my beloved Chicago needs me because who would make the snow angels? You see how I'm all about the priorities, Alert Power Love Reader?

Anyhoodle, there's no crime fighting at 3am in the middle of a thunder snow, surprisingly, so I decided to help the Streets and San guys and build a labyrinthinian maze of snow tunnels throughout the city, or, I guess I should say, in between the city and the sky because really, the city is under 5,739 feet of snow, so we're kinda like in the basement looking up. Well, SOME OF US are looking up. My snow tunnels are quite like the Catacombs of Paris, except without the dead people and above ground and with snow and not in Paris. So really nothing like the Catacombs of Paris, except for the routes, which are all marked in French, which is amazing, because I can't speak French.

I drew a map of the tunnels, and I buried it in a chest with many other treasures, which I locked with a combination lock, also in French, which may create a sticky scenario later, and in case you were wondering, you're certainly not gonna find my buried treasure buried under center field at Wrigley. On my way home from burying the treasure chest, I took a tunnel and got lost and that is embarrassing to say the least.

So then I'm sitting at the head of a three-mile long dining table in the forest and obviously once again on the set of Alice in Wonderland, but not the set they used in the movie, the set they rejected because it was shoddily made and then they had to re-evaluate their requirements and found the right set, but it was elsewhere, so they moved the movie and now here I am at the abandoned table and who's at the other end? The Hollow Human.

I hate The Hollow Human. You know why, Alert Power Love Reader? Because I'm afraid of becoming The Hollow Human. Do you have any idea how easily a super hero can get her insides hole-punched right out her back? Pretty easily. As easily as blowing a dandelion in the wind. Not the yellow ones--the white ones. What are those? Are they dead? Dead dandelions? Did they suddenly succumb to dandruff? Dandelion dandruff? Maybe those aren't dandelions at all. What if they're space ships for microscopic aliens who were sent to Earth to study the mucus membranes of humans? WHAT IF?

The Hollow Human and me? Not what I'd call friends. "Not after that snafu in Sydney," I growl down the three-mile dining table. My voice is reverberating perfectly throughout the forest. I don't have to use my stage whisper, which is good because I didn't do my vocal warm-ups yet.

"Oh. That," she says, waves her fingers like she's tired of waiting for her polish to dry.
"Don't you Oh That to me, missy."
"It was ONE high-powered, military-grade weapon. You are so sensitive."
"You are so lucky I'm a super hero."
"I know. You're good at it. I kinda hate how good you are at it."
"I started a new band."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. Wanna know the name?"
"Yeah."
"Back Handed Compliments and the Ass Kissers."

The Hollow Human slams her palms on the table, but they make no noise. I can see the tablecloth through the backs of her hands. I know I'm three miles down the table from her, but I have the vision of a finely honed animal/technological wonder that is known for possessing finely honed vision. The tablecloth has beautiful lacing around its edges.

I set my golden lasso on the table. The table creaks. I snap my fingers and then put the matchbook that appears in my palm under the table leg and voila! No more creaky table. "That is the stuff of super heroes," The Hollow Human says.

I step up on my chair then place a tentative step on the table. Sturdy. Because my matchbook is magic. So I jump up on the table and swagger down to The Hollow Human. There's a lot of cracked porcelain scattered about and I don't want to disturb it because my cracked porcelain may be someone else's charm bracelet but still I can't help but crunch a few pieces because I am wearing diamond encrusted cowboy boots and sometimes theses suckers have a mind of their own. My cape casts a ghoulish shadow behind me.

The Hollow Human looks up at me and I can see the gears in her brain matter start to churn. She has a huge hole where her torso should be. "Those are great boots," she says as I approach.

I do a Gene Kelly side kick because frankly, when the hell am I ever gonna be wearing diamond encrusted cowboy boots on a porcelain-strewn table? I mean, besides next Tuesday at the country club. It occurs to me that I have an uncanny sense for running into rejected sets from Tim Burton movies.

I squat down in front of The Hollow Human. "You don't really like my boots, do you?" I ask her.

She looks around. There are cobwebs dripping from the eucalyptus trees. A murder of crows. A gaggle of geese. A gallon of milk, a stick of butter, a loaf of bread. This place smells alive. The Hollow Human smells disinfected.

For my part, I smell like a bed of roses. And maybe a little bit of sweat that's aged a wee bit--I mean, what?! It's a velvet cape and I had to wear thick socks with the boots and like I should've known the wackadoodle reject forest would be 90 degrees and humid.

The Hollow Human looks through me and says, "You don't have to get all diamond encrusted about it."

I stand up. "Reframing the conversation. Love it." I unzip my chest. I reach into the gooey mass that I keep in a golden pouch right next to my heart. This is the greatest pouch ever invented. I got it during one of my special ops missions in Thailand. What you do is--you set it next to your heart and let it marinate there for 24 hours while you read a Faulkner novel while lying on the couch with the windows open and the summer breeze rolling over your outstretched legs and then the pouch is activated and no matter what's in your heart, thereafter the pouch and its contents maintain the summer breeze.

This is excellent because right now, while standing on the rejected dining table, in my diamond-encrusted cowboy boots, in front of The Hollow Human, I kinda wanna kick her teeth in. Instead, I squat back down and sink my fingers further into the goo in the golden pouch (band name: Goo in the Golden Pouch)--it feels like jelly. I hope it's grape jelly. I like grape jelly on toast. Recently, I've developed a taste for orange marmalade.

I pull my finger out and as it hits the air, my golden goo coagulates and I quickly stuff it into the hole in The Hollow Human's torso. I pack it in and squish it around so she's all connected. She takes a deep breath and exhales. She smells like dirt after a rain--by which I mean, stuffed with unapologetic aliveness.

I stand up. "How you like me now?" I say as I model my boots. The Hollow Human says, "I think they're kinda gaudy, but you can pull it off with the cape. But probably only at a party in a forest with a creaky dining table and cobweb-laced eucalyptus trees."

"Thank you," I say because I'm a lover of honesty and sometimes I'm not the quickest knife in the drawer.

Meanwhile, the Middle East explodes.

2011-01-26T06:00:00.003-06:00

THE GO GETTER. YEAH, THE GO GETTER.

I was crime fighting at 3am the other day, bored because all the crimers were in the basement of the city building, erasing Rahm's name from the ballots. Oh wait, no. Yes. No. He's on. He's not. Good thing time isn't ticking. Good thing there wasn't enough money in the budget for permanent-ink ballots. We'd be in a real pickle then.

As you know, Alert Power Love Reader, I like action in my crime fighting and I can tell you, without crimers, there's not a lot of action. I suppose fashion policing would be an option, but that's like doing filing for an admin job, when really you want to implement a military strategy for Afghanistan that works harmoniously with international aid agencies.

So I had to figure out something to do. First, I went to all the bus garages and, while the buses were sleeping, corrected all the grammar missteps on the advertising. Who am I to correct grammar missteps? I'm the gal with the red pen and too much time on my hands and, yes, since I know you're wondering Alert Power Love Reader, I was humming "Too Much Time on My Hands" by Styx while I red penned and yes, I was totally rocking it.

I bought a new super hero cape from Target. It has sequins and can change from day wear to evening wear in the snap of two perfectly manicured fingers!

After a while, I realized I was red penning the advertising in CMS style and clearly, the writers of the advertising were writing in MLA style--boy is there egg on MY face--and then I was faced with a conundrum: Do I return to the original text, make my way back through all the now perfectly-edited-for-CMS advertising that I just upgraded, gloriously, from The Swamp of Gunked-Out Errors (band name: Gunked-Out Errors); OR, do I go to DC and develop, pass, and implement legislation that establishes CMS style as the official style of all words? I decided to go to DC.

Before leaving, I went to the bar. Between 3 and 5, they have half-priced cheese fries and on Wednesdays, they have WAFFLE CUT cheese fries, the existence of which, I'm sure we can all agree, proves there is a Higher Power operating in our Universe.

Not surprisingly, when I walked in, who's at the bar but The Fish and The German Shepherd. Without turning around, The German Shepherd says, "Those shoes don't match the cape. The crimers will never take you seriously if your shoes don't match your cape."

"Thanks for the news, Skip Malloy," I say, "but there aren't any crimers out tonight."

I walk over to the empty stool between them and sit down. "Why do you guys always sit with a seat between you?"

"He's a dog. I'm a fish. We need our Space," The Fish says.

I look up at the TV. "You guys," I point. "What are you doing? You need an intervention."

"We do not," The German Shepherd says. "This is therapy. Our therapist told us to find a positive avenue to transport our grief."

"You are watching a snowy VHS tape of the '85 Super Bowl," I say.

The Fish goes, "We know. Don't judge. It's all we have."

In summer, these two are gonna be dying to get up to Door County. Right now, though, they hate all dairy products. I try to catch Stan's eye. Stan is the bartender right now and he's The Official Keeper of the Cheese Fries and his role in the Universe is Instrumental and Profound.

"Listen," I tell my grief-stricken pals. "I'm going to DC. I'm changing the rules so words follow CMS style, including advertising." Stan waves at me then fills up a basket of golden crunchy fries. He walks over to me carrying them like an offering and as he does, angel dust falls from the sky and then--aahhhh!!!!--glorious cheese appears on the fries and the galaxy is restored to order.

"You'll need a lobbying arm," The German Shepherd says.

"I have a good right hook," I tell him. My mouth is watering. The fries are coming.

"That's a whole different level, your right hook isn't gonna help you," The Fish says.

"Are you crying? Why are you crying? They win the '85 Super Bowl, you know," I say to The Fish as I nod at the TV.

"Grief manifests in different ways for different entities," he says.

I look at The German Shepherd. "It does," he says.

The smell of the glory fries slips in my nostrils and I am suddenly paralyzed with pleasure (band name: Paralyzed With Pleasure). Stan smiles, sets the glory fries in front of me, they disappear. I'm wiping a bit of cheese off my chin when The German Shepherd says, "They don't have glory fries in DC."

This shakes me to my core because how does a civilization exist without glory fries? I would say it's a Life Essential, like fire and water.

"Are they aliens?" I ask.
"Some of them," The Fish says.
"Will you please stop crying?"
"Be nice. I didn't push you when you collapsed with grief after finding those salt stains on that pair of Ferragamos."
"True. Sorry."
"Accepted. And the majority of DC-ers are robots, so bring a wrench and a Phillips Head screwdriver."
"What is the fascination with correcting others?" The German Shepherd asks.

I say: "It's not about correcting; it's about playing with a puzzle. It's fascinating." What I don't tell him: At the last annual conference of red penners, they told us it would be more easily accepted by a grammar-averse public to believe we were Correctors and not Fascinators of Puzzles. And so we were issued red pens and characterized as nitpicky by the press.

I don't pass along this information because it sounds conspiracy-theory-esque, and no one believes conspiracy theories because they're true and and who invited Truth to this party anyway?

"Anyway," The German Shepherd interrupts, "you must change shoes before you go and Stan can give you a steamer trunk of glory fries."

"Excellent! Can the steamer trunk match the shoes?" I squeal.

The German Shepherd snaps his fingers, which I'm sure may be hard to picture, Alert Power Love Reader, seeing how the absence of an opposable thumb makes this gesture unlikely, but I can assure you that my journalistic eye for Detail and Truth misses nothing, and there was a snap.

On my feet--excellent shoes; at my side--a steamer trunk. I decide I will also wear lace gloves. My Implementing Legislation Days are about to begin.

I hop off the stool, gather my trunk, and head towards the door. "Baseball starts in a few months, guys," I say to The Fish and The German Shepherd. They look at each other and growl. One of them is a Cubs fan, the other a Sox fan, but they can never remember who is which.

"Write if you get work," The German Shepherd says.
"The stool will be saved for you," The Fish says.
"Gastronomically speaking, that's disgusting," The German Shepherd says.
"WILL YOU GIVE ME A BREAK? I'M GRIEVING. SHIT."

I push my steamer trunk out the door. We should really give The Fish a break. He's sensitive. For the record, it's hard to get on the bus with a steamer trunk of glory fries.

2011-01-19T06:00:00.000-06:00

So long, Old Life, and thanks for all the fish.

2011-01-04T06:00:00.000-06:00

She's Gone.

Each holiday season I’m blessed with a shadow that follows me even when there’s no light. This shadow’s scientific name is I-Want-To-Poke-Out-My-Own-Eyeballs-Itis. How do you know if you have The Itis? Symptoms present themselves as frequent forays into downward, spiraling staircases lined with gilded frames, each one shedding a golden glow on a 3-D image of each mistake you have ever made since and including the day you were born. Other symptoms include a black cloud resting like a cat across your shoulders who, on a constant loop, recites “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” You can remember studying this poem in English your junior year in high school, but the only thing you can actually recall is the intensity-in-ten-cities loneliness of it. This will make your jaw tighten, another symptom of The Itis. Another symptom of The Itis: You will slowly start to realize that your skin doesn’t fit you, so you will use binder clips to tighten up the loose skin that sags around you. At first you’ll try to binder clip the loose layers under your clothes, but this will be cumbersome, so you’ll end up binder clipping everything once you’re dressed. When you walk around town all binder clipped, people will think you’re either fashion forward or mentally ill.

To relieve The Itis, I go to Heaven. Heaven is a secret lounge on Lower Michigan, suspiciously close to Billy Goat’s, which is accessed by placing your hand on a very specific spot on the Lower Mich wall and simultaneously reciting “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Upon running your fingerprint and voice waves through its high-tech fingerprint and voice wave recognition system, the door will open and voila! Shoe Wonderland.

Maintain your composure. No one likes a dipshit in Shoe Wonderland. Remain centered.

The first thing you will notice is that The Black Keys are playing. Not a recording of The Black Keys, the actual humans that make up the band are playing songs, off to the right, under a willow tree. They will take requests. They will play “Freebird.” They won’t laugh at you when you ask.

And now you may have the wherewithal to look right in front of you, which is something you knew you couldn’t do when you first walked in because you have been taught that the bright lights of a dream manifested will burn your corneas into the middle of next week. You have become attached to your corneas, so you take your Shoe Wonderland reconnaissance mission seriously. But now, you can look.

Before you is the manicured and tapered garden lawn of Versailles, but instead of long rectangles of cordoned-off foliage, there are long rectangles of cordoned-off shoes—shoes popping out of shrubs, hanging languorously off shoe trees, blossoming up from flower beds of shoe bulbs. Yes, Alert Power Love Reader, there is a God.

The peep toe leopard print three-inch wedge heel ankle boots are in the third shoe bed, hanging from the second shoe tree. I march right over, pluck the right shoe, kick off my boring shoe, and pop the wedge on my foot. Five binder clips pop off my shoulders. These leopard print ankle boots are not functional shoes, so I won’t be able to wear them for shows with my polka band, Functional Shoes (playing nightly at the VFW on Route 80).

And then, from the back of the garden, I hear a rockin screech a la Robert Plant and suddenly the sun turns into a disco ball, the trees that line either side of the shoe beds start swinging their hips and snapping their branches like fingers. At the far end of the garden, the shrubbery opens and a blast of red and blue and yellow lights explodes out, rages up to the sun, then falls back on the garden in dandelion-like flakes, which, when resting on the ground, occasionally pop with a spark of light whenever the disco ball sun rotates on them. Here comes the smoke. Then: “Kashmir”—the song, Led Zeppelin—blasting out of the clouds, which are now Bose speakers.

“Kashmir” is playing because the last live performance I saw was Peter Pan at Lookingglass, which is a theatre with many consonants. Captain Hook raged out on stage, though I think he thought he was in Neverland, not Lookingglass, and he was wearing a killer ass coat and don’t think I didn’t consider coat robbing him, but that’s rude, especially since he was trying to convey a sense of superiority and coat robbing a one-handed pirate who’s trying to convey superiority is not the best way to establish a relationship. Trust me on this, Alert Power Love Reader, I speak from experience.

Out of the smoke comes this 100-person army rockin the choreography from Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” video and, um, shit, I kinda don’t want to deal with an army of well-choreographed Janet Jacksons. I just wanna try on nonfunctional shoes. I readjust a few binder clips at my knees.

Behind the army of Janet Jacksons, on a carriage pulled by six white horses, I can see The Manicurist. I know this because there’s a sign, in neon, floating over her head that says, “The Manicurist.” There’s a neon arrow pointing down, in case you get confused. I kinda always wish “confused” was really “cornfused.” It just feels righter to me. Maybe that’s the Midwest talking.

While the white carriage takes its time rolling over to me, I wonder if Girl Talk ever mashed up “Kashmir” and “Rhythm Nation.” I think I should pass this idea along because that dude takes my calls.

It’s possible the beats don’t match, though. I consider this because the army of Janet Jacksons coming at me seems to be moving all herky-jerky, like they’re just now emerging from a mirage and have that watery veneer over them. Their sharp movements—knees, elbows, heads—are a millisecond off beat, giving them the dance equivalent of off-track lip synching. The chariot pulls alongside me and I say to The Manicurist, “More percussion. That’s the solution to everything.” I nod at the hundreds of Janet Jacksons, now standing still in at-attention formation across the grass.

“Preaching to the choir, sweetheart,” The Manicurist sings over to me while waving a beautifully adorned hand at the Janet Jackson army. Her nails are long and Kermit the Frog green. She is rocking the green. She has curly black hair. She is wearing a killer ass coat. She is the exact opposite of Captain Hook.

This cornfuses me for a minute, until I realize that The Black Keys have been covering “Kashmir” for the last twelve minutes and it SOUNDS AWESOME. These guys should make a record. The Manicurist descends from her carriage with the help of her four horsemen, dressed in white, no death scythes anywhere to be seen. The Manicurist points at my toes, two of which are sticking out of the peep toe of the three-inch wedge heel ankle boot that is currently engulfing my right foot. “Oh. No. Nonononono,” she says. The marching band, which I’m only just now noticing because it’s lined up behind the white carriage, plays the drum sequence from Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk,” The Black Keys play the final notes of “Kashmir,” then all music goes silent. Everyone turns to look at my toes.

OK. The thing is, in this moment, my toes are a pale pink, which I thought would give me a clean look, but I’m so pale I’m purple, so really the pale pink just makes me look dead, which is apparently disconcerting for others.

“That is not working for you,” The Manicurist says to me. Everyone—the marching band, the four horsemen, the six white horses, the hundred-person Janet Jackson army—nods their heads in perfect Bob Fosse unison. I say, “But I was thinking that it—” “You were thinking you could shoe horn something that doesn’t work into something that does work, right? Rhetorical question. Save your breath. The age-old fight—square peg, round hole,” The Manicurist says.

She struts over to me, looking me up and down. She walks slowly around me, like she’s looking for something. “It’s time to make a change. You need something that works for you. That color is ugly.” Five more binder clips pop off me, from where I don’t know because I have about a million of these suckers clipped all over me. “Ah ha, but it’s the ugly I know,” I tell her. This is an insightful comment, I think, and I’m sure I will surprise her with my overwhelming enlightenmentness. “But there’s Beautiful in the world, so let’s go for that,” she says. She pulls from her sequined fanny pack a bottle of nail polish remover and a cotton ball. I take a step back. “Um. But this is the ugly I know,” I tell her. What is she, nuts? You can’t just walk up to someone and change their nail polish color. Not on their toes. Not in Shoe Wonderland. “Yes,” she says still walking towards me, “but there’s Beautiful out there.” “Well, I know, I hear you, but this is—” “I ARRIVED ON A CHARIOT THAT EMERGED FROM SMOKE WHILE “KASHMIR” BLASTED FROM CLOUD SPEAKERS. SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME.”

She had a point. Anyone who can make an entrance like that, more than likely has inside information on proper toe nail polish. Not everyone can pull off a “Kashmir” entrance. “OK,” I said, “but no funny stuff. I define ‘funny stuff’ as Barbie pink and Kermit the Frog green.” “Where do you stand on eggplant?” She asks. “The color or the vegetable?” “The vegetable.” “Um, well, grilled it’s good, but sometimes—” “OK, we’ll also have to work on sarcasm recognition. I don’t give a shit about your tastes in vegetables. Your toe nail color is eggplant. To work, then.”

With that, I am suddenly engulfed in a whirl of smoke and lights and music. There is a foot massage and top coat involved. I hear a version of the Stones’ “Monkey Man” played with mostly strings and piano. When it all clears out, my toes are perfectly polished, I’m wearing fashionable shoes that go with my outfit and are also walkable, and I feel like my skin fits me. There is a mountain of binder clips stacked next to me. I look me up and down. “Nice job,” I say to The Manicurist. “Change is absolutely frightening, absolutely necessary,” The Manicurist says to me. “Poetical,” I reply. “Yeah,” she says, “I’m sponsored by Halliburton. That’s their tagline for 2011. Expect bombs.” She turns and climbs back into her chariot. I expect a big to-do exit, what with the Janet Jackson army, the white horses, the horsemen, the marching band. But instead, they all just disappear, like disintegrating condensation on the bathroom mirror.

When I’m left alone in Shoe Wonderland, I look down at my feet. I’m wearing blue suede YSL pumps. They are four inches tall. They have stiletto heels. I hold my breath and as I do, I grow huge, taller than the trees, taller than the taller trees, taller than the clouds, until I am so tall, I’m taller than the whole world that Shoe Wonderland exists in, so I step out of it and stand in the galaxy. The planet of Shoe Wonderland is like a balloon, resting half deflated at my foot. I look out into the rest of the galaxy. There’s a planet to the left that looks just perfect for me. I look down. With my right foot, I aim my stiletto at the balloon, then pop it quickly and efficiently with the graceful point of my heel. There is something in the air that I can’t quite put my finger on; it smells like fresh flowers, now it’s like the forest immediately after a summer rain. I start walking towards that planet to the left that looks just perfect for me. Now I recognize that smell in the air.

It smells like hope.

Dumpsters with reading comprehension problems.

2010-12-15T13:47:00.001-06:00

2010-12-09T14:55:00.001-06:00

Vertigo

2010-12-07T17:15:00.001-06:00

We meet again, Mr. Strummer.

2010-10-29T11:22:00.001-05:00

NYC

2010-10-29T10:59:00.001-05:00

2010-10-28T06:00:00.000-05:00

CRAZY WHAT THEY DO

In New York tonight or tomorrow? Wanna hear a New York actor tell one of my stories? I can't imagine why that isn't on your intinerary already. In case you change things up a bit, go see this.

2010-10-27T06:00:00.001-05:00

IN A ROOM WITH YOUR TWO TIMER AND YOU'RE SURE YOU'RE NEAR THE END

Trekking across the Van Buren bridge into 40 mph winds, in the midst of a rain storm, while carrying a 10-pound backpack on your back—this is called RESISTANCE TRAINING. It is not called: commuting. Just a little PSA there for you, Alert Power Love Reader. As you know, we are all about the PSAs here at Power Love HQ.

In other news, I have saved the world AGAIN.

As you know, I’m prone to spontaneously throwing rock concerts—it’s a thing, I know, but I like making instant parties with music and peeps and also, I’m the world’s greatest rock star singer, which as you know, is, like, the best cover when you’re actually a super hero covert secret agent op on a mission.

The mission: Total Annihilation. The target: The Break Downer. Can’t stand that guy. No problem, thought I. I will simply belt out my three-hour rock star set that’s heavy with percussion and dancing, and immediately after, I will capture The Break Downer and then I will relax to my cottage in the forest and knit socks.

In retrospect, maybe the antelope horns weren’t the best accessory. Who can say? What is difficult to say is, I didn’t see it coming that The Break Downer would be front row center at my rock concert, because on MY agenda for the evening, I wasn’t supposed to be seeing The Break Downer and subsequently Taking Out The Target until Roman Numeral Number III, and at the time me and my band started our rock star set, we were on Roman Numeral Number II of the agenda for the evening (Rock Out).

So I’m on stage and I’ve got the antelope horns on and I’ve got this great guitar—custom, soft as fine cashmere—and I play like Jimmy Page and I do it in royal purple faux leather pants, and there are 5.5 million people in the audience. In direct opposition to stereotype, I am gracious and professional on stage, it’s my persona, and that is why I don’t fall down and eat it in my five-inch YSL Tribute heels.

But there’s something about the drum solo part in “In the Air Tonight,” that makes me just wanna rip into a guitar solo, which I do, on this night, as we cover “In the Air Tonight” as we’re wont to do, but, as you may know Alert Power Love Reader, there is no guitar solo during the drum solo in “In the Air Tonight,” and that is because it’s a drum solo.

Well, that was an unfortunate misreading of events on my part, but luckily, I have the world’s most supportive band, so the rhythm guitar dude lightly touches the back of my knee with the tip of his toe, but I’m already in the throes of a true headbanging experience, so I teeter on my YSL Tribute heels, the weight of the antelope horns makes me top heavy, and I promptly fall upon The Break Downer in the front row center, just missing, by centimeters, impaling him with my antelope horns. In that moment, there was a question as to whether the band would make it to the encore.

Out of all my mortal enemies, The Break Downer pisses me off the most. He has an outer shell like a robot. He wears horse blinders on his head. His nose is always running. But mostly, he’s always trying to break everyone down. Looking at The Break Downer smushed beneath me and my antelope horns, while peeps dance all around us, while the music blasts and rips and blossoms (the band keeps playing as they always do; I fall off the stage a lot), I get a little annoyed—so I take a deep breath and I rearrange the evening’s agenda.

“I see you were expecting me later, Rock Star,” The Break Downer says to me upon seeing my agenda-induced hesitation.

You see what I mean, Alert Power Love Reader? It never ends with this guy. Nag, nag, nag. And another thing, The Break Downer and all his pals are jerks—they’re really cool when you first meet them, so you talk, then they hoard information and throw it back at you when you’re supposed to be rock star-ing, not super hero-ing.

“I have reassessed the situation and the agenda items have been rearranged,” I tell him.

“Then perhaps we should commence?”

“You’re pretty desirous to get going for someone so close to being impaled by antelope horns.”

“You can’t lift those things and even if you could, you wouldn’t be able to do it while balancing on those heels anyway and why do you always do that? You’re always so nonfunctional. You’re gonna die alone.”

And here we go.

I decide to ditch the horns, keep the heels. I hook one shoe through a belt hoop and twirl the other in my hand. The music suddenly flips into Western Showdown Music. A tumbleweed blows by. That tumbleweed just cannot find a home. I am suddenly chewing tobacco, which I spit out on the dirt under my cowboy boots. My horse whinnies from the post in front of the saloon. He’s desperate to joust. I telepathically remind him that we’re not in that time period right now.

“Break Downer,” I say, “this is gonna go one of two ways. You’re gonna leave. Or I’m gonna make ya.”

The Break Downer stretches one arm out, then fans his fingers in front of himself like he’s draped in golden rings. He’s not actually draped in golden rings.

“Really, dude?” I say. “You know we’re in the Wild West, right?”

The Break Downer flips the flap of his duster and rests his unbejeweled hand on his gun in its holster. “I think it’s gonna be any time period I want,” he says.

“In that case,” I say, “you won’t mind me using my lightsaber?” I pull my lightsaber out of its sheath attached to a belt hoop that does not hold my YSL Tribute heels. Alert Power Love Reader, did you know Darth Vader is Luke’s father? I gotta be honest with you, I never saw that one coming.

Anyway, me and The Break Downer, we duel, and halfway through, my horse whinnies like he’s never whinnied before and before I know what’s happening, The Break Downer is holding up a tiny vial. He’s spinning it between his index finger and his thumb. He’s looking lovingly at it while it catches the sun. Prisms of light scatter across the facade of the general store.

“I doubt you’ve acquired the expertise to make it effective,” I tell The Break Downer.

“You underestimate me, Rock Star.” He talks with a lot of s-sounds, like an anthropomorphic snake. “I acquired the expertise while trekking the highlands of the Kunlun Shan province.”

I doubt there are highlands in the Kunlun Shan province, but I’ve left my encyclopedia backstage at the rock concert because Taking Out The Target was supposed to be Roman Numeral Number III on the evening’s agenda AND NOW DO YOU SEE THE IMPORTANCE OF AGENDAS?

“Irregardless,” I say to The Break Downer, “I am now going to question your virility as a man in an effort to convince you not to open that vial and therefore expose the world to your highly contagious virus that seeps into people’s bones and sucks out their marrow and replaces it with the waste material of clams thereby rendering all humans miserable break downers like yourself.”

“You’ve done your research, Rock Star,” he says, licking the vial.

Of course I’ve done my research—absent encyclopedia notwithstanding, I AM A VERY PREPARED SUPER HERO. Sheesh. Little credit, m’kay?

I look over at my horse. I see that my YSL Tribute heels are tucked safely into the saddle bag. He does that sometimes, my horse. He takes care of things for me. Rock concerts hurt his ears.

As you may know, Alert Power Love Reader, sometimes I like to shoot lightning bolts out of my fingertips. So this is what I do as I turn from my horse and look at The Break Downer. And suddenly, the vial of clam waste disintegrates, leaving no harmful residue behind. Save The World. Check.

More than likely, the rock concert is going off without a hitch, though I’m concerned about the lack of a guitar solo in the drum solo of “Freebird.” It isn’t until we make it to a small town in New Mexico, two days after the duel with The Break Downer, that my horse tells me there is no drum solo in “Freebird.”

Go to Morseland tonight...good stuff at Morseland tonight. 2nd Story.

Confession

2010-10-26T15:54:00.001-05:00

One of my stories is on Cell Stories today: www.cellstories.net.

Glory.

2010-10-11T09:17:00.001-05:00

2010-09-30T08:56:00.001-05:00

2010-09-07T06:00:00.002-05:00

YOUR BLACK CARDS CAN MAKE YOU MONEY SO YOU’LL HIDE THEM WHEN YOU’RE ABLE

Where were we? Right—the gauzy shields we lace over our eyes so we don’t have to see what we don’t want to see. To wit:

Once again I am out at 3am crime fighting. Gets in the blood, you know, the challenge of it, the satisfaction, the costume, particularly the sequined tights and the alligator boots. Plus, there’s the whole save-the-world thing. Plus again, cool accessories. I love a sturdy tiara. But…still.

As it happened, the other night I’m walking along Lower Wacker, right down the westbound lane, not many cars, and I had my invisibilitator capacitor, which is much like the flux capacitor, but without the daddy issues, and so I’m invisible and transparent, so any cars that do blunder by will go right through me. This is the best angle from which to see both the river and the inside wall of the Wacker tunnel, which houses various doorways to various messenger centers at various office buildings and the occasional portal to another dimension, which you have to keep your eye out for, they’re rather nondescript, but once you see one, you don’t forget it, and that’s what I was looking for when I was crime fighting at 3am the other night.

You see, Alert Power Love Reader, it’s a heavy load to carry, this crime fighting thing and now I’m in the process of losing my mind. This makes crime fighting particularly difficult. My mind seeps out of my ears and it does so at the most inopportune times. Sometimes it’s brutally embarrassing—gawd, like that time at the Grammy’s during my acceptance speech (AWKWARD) and that other time, right before the gun went off for the Olympic road race, I mean, thank god for helmets.

Anyway, my mind oozes out from behind my ears in slushy goo that looks like cottage cheese, so I usually eat it because in addition to losing my mind, I am also dealing with the inevitable onslaught of osteoporosis, and cottage cheese has a lot of calcium.

Ever been to Lower Wacker at 3am? The tourism board doesn’t include pictures of it in its literature. The portal door that caught my eye rests under the 55 W. Wacker building. I knew it was a portal door because everyone else thought it was a rectangle drawn on the wall in chalk.

Anyone who knows anything about portal doors knows they are always drawn in chalk, just like in Pan’s Labyrinth, which I have just watched three times in a row, and now I realize I may have to hire a fairy to guide me through my portal experiences, but hell those suckers are expensive—they’re union, you know—who can pay those rates? And yeah, I get that I should provide lunch, but a specific clause for Cheesecake Factory? Do you have any idea how many calories are in even the lightest meal there? How do fairies keep their fairy skills sharp when they’re porked out on French fry fat?

I’m gonna name my punk band French Fry Fat.

So I float over to the portal door under 55 W. Wacker because you are nothing on Lower Wacker if you don’t float. I pull out my stick of chalk as I approach. This particular section contains multiple cardboard box homes and three dogs who are inherently unhappy. When I get close, I tip toe. I pull my chalk out of my gun holster, which is where I keep my portal-drawing chalk among other crime fighting tools like Windex and allergy medication.

I unsheathe my chalk and set it on the upper left corner of the portal and start to trace the door. I hear cracking knuckles behind me. Instinctually, my free hand grabs for the Windex. “You can’t go in there,” the voice grumbles.

I turn to look. He’s one of the inherently unhappy German Shepherds native to this section of Lower Wacker, standing on his hind legs, filing his nails as he leans against a support beam. “Says who?” I say, turning around, making no effort whatsoever to conceal my weaponrous Windex.

The German Shepherd doesn’t look up from his nails. They are gorgeous nails. French manicure. I watch him file. He’s gonna file that polish right off and they charge for touch ups, regardless of reason. Like, you can’t just go into a salon and say, “I was picking a fight with a delusional trespasser who eats her own brain to maintain a calcium balance,” and expect a nail technician to understand. I mean, this is why they use top coat in the first place.

“I thought only poodles cared about their nails like that,” I say. Instantly, the German Shepherd is in my face—nail file dropped in the sewer drain, his snout breathing Mad Dog fumes into my mouth. “Nail care is what separates us from the savages,” he says. He looks me up and down. I can see from his sneer that I’m not a danger to him. “Who the fuck are you?” He asks. He’s just caught a glimpse of the Windex. Now he knows he’s not dealing with a novice.

“I’m the one who’s gonna walk through this doorway. See?” I hold my chalk in front of him. It shines like the fake smile of a game show host. “So. Who the fuck are YOU?” I say. Then I crack my knuckles because two can play that game. “I’m the one who’s gonna save you from yourself,” he says.

Ha. Nice try, manipulative hind-leg standing German Shepherd. “I don’t need saving,” I say, “the world does.” I feel pretty good about that statement until I feel the leaking ooze behind my right ear. I turn and continue outlining the door. I don’t really need a calcium infusion right now, so I don’t eat my brain leakage. The German Shepherd takes a really big sniff of the air in front of him.

“You’re not particularly inherently unhappy,” I say as I continue to trace my doorway on the wall. “No,” he says. “Just a myth. People believe anything you tell them. Especially when you hire paid actors to tell them.” I glance behind me, “Are you a paid actor?” The German Shepherd is filing his nails again. “Yes. I’m Lassie. Timmy’s drowning in the well. Help.” I finish tracing the portal doorway. The German Shepherd says, “I’ll meet you at the river.” “What?” “After you get the shit scared out of you when you look through that doorway, I’ll meet you at the river.”

I push the door quickly and efficiently. I am getting the hell out of the crime fighting super hero thing it is sucking my soul dry even though I love it and I have to move on and I’m about to walk in when I see the scariest thing I have ever seen in my life. I take a step back and swallow. The leaking out of my right ear feels like a waterfall and my heart is beating war drums in my throat. My hands are shaking. I drop the chalk.

I’m across Wacker at the river’s edge before I know it. The German Shepherd is talking to a fish, who is also standing on its hind legs, except it’s a fish, so I guess it’s his hind fins, and he’s also filing his nails. “I just need a fairy, that’s all,” I say to them. “OK,” the German Shepherd says. “I JUST NEED A FAIRY THAT’S ALL!” I feel the need to yell this because humans who yell in order to make their point are always really well respected and listened to. “OK,” the German Shepherd says. He’s smarmy.

The fish spreads his fins in front of him, like a fan unfolding. He looks demurely over at me. “You called for a fairy, yes?” The fish also has gorgeous nails. What is up with this well-groomed business down here? My nails are chipped, picked at, hangnailed, and generally rather disgusting looking. I hide them in my pockets.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m the fairy,” the fish says. “Sure you are,” I say. “You need someone who can see clearly,” he says. “I’m your guy.” “That’s a bold statement coming from a fish with one eyeball.” “She doesn’t get it,” the German Shepherd says. “Hey, you know what?” I snap. “You’re a dog and you’re a fish. I have opposable thumbs. Therefore, I am smarter than both of you together.” I mean, really.

They crack up. Like, blow up laughter like what you did the first time you saw Eddie Murphy do that ice cream bit in his red leather pants. I whip out my Windex and point the nozzle at them. They stop laughing. “Let’s go,” I tell them.

We go back to the portal door. I shove them in front of me. “Go,” I tell them. They walk in like they’re dancing down the Soul Train line. I mean, really. Over the German Shepherd’s shoulder I can see the scariest thing I have ever seen: a mirror, and me in it, trapped, without a way to get out. I stare at it and swallow. I push the German Shepherd and the fish in front of me. “You ready?” the German Shepherd says. “Of course I am,” I snap at him. For the record, Alert Power Love Reader, I was colossally Not Ready at that moment.

We walk forward like a well-oiled Bob Fosse routine. As we get closer to the mirror, I wrap my fingers around the nozzle of the Windex in my gun holster. The trapped me reflection is knocking on the top of the mirror. She’s lost her voice, I can tell. She’s been screaming to get out for quite sometime and now there’s no voice left, but she’s still screaming.

The fish looks demurely behind him, at me. “Count of three,” he says. I nod. I don’t hear the countdown. I run through both of them like Jordan splitting the defense and then I’m on it, the mirror, grabbing its frame with both hands and wrestling it to the ground. It’s not much of a fight, it is a mirror after all, it’s not like it’s gonna fight back. I smash it on the ground anyway, whip out my Windex, and start flooding the mirror with blue liquid. My reflection is suddenly still. And then she smiles. And then she disappears. I am suddenly lighter. My insides don’t feel like knots anymore. My brain isn’t leaking out my right ear.

I look back at the German Shepherd and the fish. I stand up and my tights aren’t too tight and I really love the way these alligator boots make my legs looks longer. The German Shepherd and the fish are filing their nails. “In my next life I wanna be a rock star,” I tell them. “Got it,” the fish says. He nods at the German Shepherd and they head back out to Lower Wacker. I follow.

2010-08-05T06:00:00.000-05:00

AND THUS IT IS SPOKEN

Final night! August 6, 2010! Lifeline Theatre! 8:30pm!

2010-08-03T12:48:00.001-05:00

Fillet of Solo! Tonight! Lifeline Theatre!

2010-07-29T17:38:00.001-05:00

2010-07-23T06:00:00.001-05:00

THE SHOULDS

Sometimes it’s exhausting saving the world all the time. And by “the world,” I mean my sanity. But I got it, no, don’t worry about it, just continue sipping your latte and making fun of Blagojevich, I’ll be alright.

But will I? How many more of these scenarios will I survive:

It’s 3am and I’m walking down an empty city street. In fact, this street looks just like the way LaSalle looked in The Dark Knight and this is because I love Christopher Nolan’s storytelling abilities and I love Chicago more and this is my post.

So I’m walking down LaSalle. It’s empty, the moon casts a spotlight on the Board of Trade, and it’s hot because it’s summer and we’re all gonna die from the heat, that has nothing to do with my sanity or this post, that’s just a public service announcement so don’t say I never did anything for you, Alert Power Love Reader, and by the way, when you’re gone, can I have your record collection?

So what you may not know about me is that I frequently walk the streets at 3am because I’m a super hero and 3am is when the crime happens. It’s also when the parties let out and when there’s no crime, I like to fuck with drunk stoners, it’s just a thing, I guess.

But on this night, I’m walking along and who do I see oozing out the alleys? The Shoulds. These guys. Talk about nemesis. Although, there are a lot of them—nemesi? When I’m super hero-ing, sometimes I lose my usually impeccable command of grammar. Do I treat The Shoulds as individual sniping, nagging, confidence-destroying, self-doubt inducing balls of hate, or are The Shoulds a collective noun and therefore a singular entity? Don’t think I didn’t put some thought into this conundrum as I walked down LaSalle at 3am on my way to fight crime.

But after a bit, once I realized that there were multitudes of these guys—like Pac Mans, with webbed feet glued to their undersides, wearing bowler hats, smoking Cuban cigars, pulling them out of yellow-stained teeth with three-fingered hands—and they’re waddling towards me, like a swarm of mosquitoes, but not flying, waddling, and not buzzing, more like clicking their teeth like loose dentures, so not like mosquitoes at all, except for the annoyance factor.

When I fight crime, I find myself more often annoyed, as opposed to scared, and this is because I am actually annoyed. The Shoulds are not to be trifled with, however, that was a lesson I learned after that debacle in Caracas, and they also have shape shifting powers because I’ve recently become overwhelmingly enamored of True Blood, although the shape shifter isn’t really the most intriguing character to me—get over your reluctance to be a dog, dude—Erik is, the hot blonde vampire, mostly because he refers to children as “tea cup humans” and wears gray suits that he doesn’t sweat through and has a penchant for stretching about languorously and issuing threats through smiles.

Anyway, the debacle in Caracas. File that one under Things The CIA Won’t Tell You. The Shoulds are capable of achieving great feats of growth at the most inopportune times and 3am on LaSalle when the night is like a Christopher Nolan film is not the time to underestimate your nemesis/nemesi.

“Mz. Morris,” Leader Should says as he waddles towards me. He’s balancing precariously along the yellow lane line, coming at me head on, so really I see a yellow circle with a hat approaching me. A tumbleweed rolls by my feet, and I kick it out of the way because I ordered the tumbleweed for my next post, not this one WHEN WILL THE PROP DEPARTMENT GET IT TOGETHER?

“Fuck you, Should,” I say to the Leader. I’m not one for pleasantries when I’m crime fighting. The rest of The Shoulds cover their mouths and gasp. They’re lined up on the sidewalks. More of them seem to be pouring in from the alleys.

“That’s no way to treat an old friend,” Leader Should says.
“You ruined my lavender taffeta dress in Caracas, you piece of shit,” I tell him.
“I paid the dry cleaning bill,” he says earnestly.
“You can’t get The Shoulds out of a lavender taffeta dress, you ass. You fuckers leave a stain of regret and self-doubt and do you know how hard it is to remove that? Really hard.”
“Well, you should’ve worn more appropriate clothing for your crime fighting endeavors, then,” Leader Should tells me. He’s right, of course, it’s just that I was in a lavender taffeta dress kind of mood at the time and between you and me, Alert Power Love Reader, I thought the dress was eggplant. Which is why I wore those shoes, which ended up being the cause of my undoing. Don’t think I haven’t been through hours of therapy over that one.

“You shouldn’t smoke so much, it’ll kill you, then who will I fight?” I tell Leader Should. I see him wince. The crowd of Shoulds oozing out on to the sidewalks suddenly hushes and freezes. No one tells Leader Should what he should do. Except me, of course. Tonight, I am not wearing a lavender taffeta dress.

“Perhaps you should rephrase,” Leader Should says.

“Perhaps, my ass—I’m shoulding YOU, jerk. You should clean your apartment, you should be dating, you should be a more graceful leader, you should be prettier, smarter, funnier, nicer, better, more disciplined, more ambitious, more polite, more positive, more travelled, more well-read, more understanding, more patient, more relaxed, more everything you’re not.”

Leader Should is suddenly ten feet tall, and he looks like a robot. The rest of The Shoulds are robots now, too, only they’re only six feet tall. “We should go to war, Mz. Morris,” Leader Should says.

His Cuban cigar has been discarded and lies at his cinder block feet. His bowler hat is blowing away into the night, which is weird because there’s no wind. Leader Should raises a hand, as though he’s about to wave, but no, he’s not gonna wave because there go his fingers—suddenly turning into swords. Predictable.

I take a deep breath. I find my center. I should eat better, I think to myself and then I shake my head. You see how insidious The Shoulds are, Alert Power Love Reader? We’re not even two seconds into the fight and they’re already inside my brain. I take another deep breath. I am glad I’m wearing a backless deep green dress and killer shoes (John Fluevog heels, strappy, with scalloped detailing around the heel, I mean, really!)

Leader Should whips lightning out of his fingertip swords. Again, predictable. Did he learn nothing in Caracas? “You should get a new game plan, fucker,” I yell at him. The Shoulds are lined up along the sidewalks, they gasp yet again. They’re gonna get the hiccups if they keep doing that. I’m about to tell them this, except my attention is taken by the bolt of lightning hurtling towards my face.

I reach behind me, to my back, and pull off one of my star tattoos. I hurl the tattoo like a ninja star at the lightning bolt and the lightning disintegrates, like the tail end of sparklers on the 4th of July.

Leader Should is taken aback. He pauses and stares. The Shoulds on the sidewalks follow his lead. The moon chuckles. The moon and I? We’re like this.

“Learning, you are, Mz. Morris,” Leader Should says. Sometimes he likes to pretend he’s Yoda. He’s got this whole Star Wars thing going. I don’t reply. Instead, I peel off the sun tattoo from my left ankle and whip it to my left, at the 209 S. LaSalle building, which has a cool winding staircase, or used to when I was10, FYI.

My sun tattoo hits the building at the perfect angle and flies back down with great force, slicing off the top of Leader Should’s head. It clunks to the ground unceremoniously. Now Leader Should is operating with half a head.

I reach around to my back and pull off another star tattoo, I spin in circles, not unlike Wonder Woman, and when I’m at maximum velocity, I flick the star tattoo. It flies through the air—starts at the southeast corner of Adams and Jackson, flies down the east side of LaSalle, chopping all The Shoulds in half, Shoulds fall to the ground, squirm, then expel their last breath, the star tattoo changes its direction, flies up LaSalle on the west side, chops up The Shoulds over there, and then the star tattoo floats over to me and eventually rests in my waiting, open palm. “Learning, I am,” I tell Leader Should.

He spits blood out on the street—his blood is really discarded trash and the dudes from Streets and San are gonna be pissed tomorrow. “This is not over, Mz. Morris,” Leader Should says. I can see him trying to fiddle with his Bat Man belt, but his sword fingers aren’t nimble enough to unsnap the pouches. If he stays true to form, he’s looking for the smoke potion, which will render me utterly nonfunctional and I’ll collapse to the ground in a puddle of fear and doubt.

Suddenly, I’m tired. I’m tired of fighting The Shoulds, I’m tired of questioning myself, I’m tired of worrying. I reach around to my back and pull the angel wings tattoo off my right shoulder. I cradle her in my hands for a minute, and then I release her into the air like a dove. The angel wings tattoo flutters for a second, confused, I’m sure, because this tattoo is all about peace.

But then she gets it. She flies over to Leader Should and floats in front of him. She waits a moment for him to look at her with his one working eye, and then she says, “We’re going to be kind to each other now.” And then she kisses him, sweetly, and floats back to me and places herself back on my right shoulder.

I watch Leader Should take a deep breath. He’s clearly confused. He falls to his knees. I say, “You owe me for the lavender dress, Should.” I feel my angel wings tattoo flick me and—ow! “But don’t worry about it,” I say,” I don’t look so hot in lavender anyway.” I hear a soft approving sigh from the angel wings.

Leader Should stretches out on the ground like he’s about to take a nap. “If we don’t fight each other, what will we do with all that time?” He says. He’s sleepy, and his voice is like a kid’s who’s falling asleep but trying desperately not to.

I look up at the moon. “I have no idea,” I tell Leader Should. I walk away from him. Then I head out through the Loop and walk over to the lake. I step out on to the lake’s surface—in John Fluevog shoes, you can walk on water, which I do—and start heading north, up the lake, towards the UP, but maybe I’ll make my way to another lake. Maybe I’ll make my way to the ocean. Maybe I’ll make my way to the moon.

2010-07-19T06:00:00.000-05:00

SERIOUSLY, BUY YOUR TICKETS NOW

More information here.

2010-07-09T06:00:00.001-05:00

THE CHICAGO PROJECT

Conceived and Directed by Margot Bordelon and Cassy Sanders

With stories and plays by: Scott Barsotti, Molly Each, Laura Eason, Brian Golden, Kristin Idaszak, Kim Morris, Nick Ward, and Doug Whippo

July 9th & 10th at 7:00pm & July 11th at 2pm
Lookingglass Theatre in the Water Tower Water Works
Upstairs Studio Theater
821 N. Michigan Ave.

FREERSVP to ChiProjectRSVP@gmail.com

Nelson Algren famously wrote, “Loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose.” Theatre Seven of Chicago presents The Chicago Project, a collage of interviews, autobiographical stories and personal experiences performed by a versatile eight-actor ensemble. From bike crashes, to kidney stones, from CTA mishaps, to the Cubs worst loss, the evening explores the challenges and joys of living in the City of Big Shoulders.

Last spring Margot Bordelon and Cassy Sanders put out a call for Chicago stories and plays by Chicago authors. Eight pieces were selected to be woven together and presented in a staged reading for three performances only. We invite you to join us and hope that you will stay afterward to discuss what resonated with you, where you think the project should go next, and even share your own Chicago stories. Featuring performances by: Marjorie Armstrong, Paige Collins, Sarah Gitenstein, Megan Hill, Alexander Lane, Travis Williams, Joe Zarrow, and George Zerante. Stage Managed by Dan McArdle

2010-07-04T06:00:00.000-05:00

Listen to this human.

Happy 4th.

THIS IS WHERE THEY GO WHEN THEY WANNA HAVE FUN

2010-06-26T22:26:00.001-05:00

This is not a sign, it's actually a portal to another dimension. Story to follow.

2010-06-24T06:00:00.000-05:00

STORYTELLING ALERT!

Dear Alert Power Love Reader,
I am going to tell a story at Morseland on Wednesday, June 30. Will you please come? I have it on good authority that it will be a grand show. This is because DebLewis and Doug Whippo are telling stories and they are amazing. I'm totally gonna suck up their awesome. More info here.

2010-06-18T06:00:00.000-05:00

YOU GIVE YOUR HEART AWAY TOO EASILY

I can feel it wiggling around just inside my right ear. Last night I could hear it, inside my brain, somewhere in the center—is there a center of the brain? Is it like the center of the Universe, only dumber and more self-absorbed? Anyway, I have it on good authority that the wiggling inside my ear today, started there, in the center, yesterday. It’s a worm.

The worm got itself hired at the factory that produces my thoughts—on the velvet conveyor belt, thoughts luxuriate in the form of lace squares that head into the kiln, where they will be lovingly warmed before being available for the buffet that is my stream of consciousness.

The worm, standing on its worm tail, stands over the conveyor belt—hair net bobby-pinned tightly, safety goggles secured—and, as if moving to the beat of a metronome, licks its right index finger, leans over the belt, and gently traces the edges of every third lace square. The lace squares charge forward, into the kiln, where the worm spit bakes into my lace square thoughts. Then—voila!—I’m thinking worm-spit ideas.

Worm-spit ideas—we’ve studied this extensively at the Power Love Thought and World Domination Center. Worm-spit ideas are those ideas that fill up your brain so completely, you have no doubt that they’re true. And then you say them out loud, or to a friend, and you realize how a.) stupid; b.) self-absorbed; c.) paranoid; d.) desperate for therapy you really are. Worm-spit ideas are a cry for help that’s been suffocated in a locked chest and buried six feet under. For one hundred million years.

For example, say someone sits next to you on the el. They look at you, sniff, make a face that says, “Bathing in the landfill again?” and then they move to another seat. Now, you know you haven’t been bathing in the landfill. In fact, you question this person’s use of “again,” as it implies repetition and you know for a fact that you’ve never bathed in a landfill once, much less repeatedly.

Still, you struggle to recall when you last used deodorant and you think maybe your shower is building up dust due to lack of use. Also, you’ve worn these socks twice this week and you’re genetically predisposed to smellyfeetitis. You remind yourself that you are Very Busy—those PBS travel shows aren’t going to watch themselves—and Laundering and Showering is more like a band name and at the merch table, you could sell miniature shower heads as key rings. You could also sell miniature water guns whose barrels would provide a perfect fit for the miniature shower heads and you could charge a fucking fortune for that shit. Especially at Pitchfork or Lollagapaloopa, where the humans bake their brains on all manner of stuff and then spend a million dollars on Spam.

Anyway, your feet smell because you haven’t showered in days and you really shouldn’t be wearing those socks; even still, those are no reasons for a sniff-induced seat change. Right?

See that, Alert Power Love Reader? See that teetering between knowledge and doubt? That’s the worm-spit effect. It’s the thing that seeps in and disintegrates your critical thinking skills without your detection. It’s brilliant in its deception.

So what is the solution? The solution is: The Worm-Spit Idea Catalyst Detonator.

The Worm-Spit Idea Catalyst Detonator is the premier detector and destroyer of bad mojobeans. It can literally sniff out, like a wolf, even the wispiest aromas of worm-spit ideas, and then, through a complex system of algorithms, apple pie, and 18th-century weaving techniques, kill and destroy. It’s brilliant in its honesty.

So let’s say you’re sitting on the el, and you have the aforementioned experience with Mr. Smelly Sensitive Man. All you need to do is whip out your custom-made Worm-Spit Idea Catalyst Detonator, point it at the offender, and simply read the screen. At first, the screen will look like the computer code from The Matrix. And then you’ll see a warning from the Feds about how poorly your mother raised you and how The Matrix’s computer code image is totally copyrighted and you’re gonna end up in jail if you keep using it and INTERPOL hates you. We’re still working out the bugs on this, as you may have guessed. Except, INTERPOL really does hate you. Eventually, you’ll get to a screen that will delineate exactly what is up with Mr. Smelly Sensitive Man.

You will see that Mr. Smelly Sensitive Man has his own issues. That he’s upset because he’s hollow inside and deeply in love with his own self-pity, which takes the form of blueberry Eggo waffles, the smell of which follows him around all day, even into the bathroom, where he’s resigned himself to using stalls, not the urinals, so now all the dudes at work think he’s a sissy-pants who shits all day, when really, the aroma of blueberry Eggo waffles is so strong, especially when excreting waste material, that he literally and automatically makes a face that looks like someone just threw a pie of snot in his face, and that’s not a face he wants to show to the world, or to urinal users, or to you, either, raw-nerved el rider with the much-worn socks.

Well, now you know. And you have a choice to be understanding and patient, or you could follow him over to that other seat, lean in, and say, “Are those blueberry Eggo waffles you’re wearing, or did you just piss on yourself?” And then you could point to the stain on his pants.

Or you could return to listening to the worm in your brain. Or you could move on to thoughts that don’t include other people’s pity pits. You see, now you have so many choices in front of you, and all because of your custom-made Worm-Spit Idea Catalyst Detonator.

Of course, you don’t want to get too cocky. At some point, you’re gonna realize there’s a pattern emerging: Why are you always whipping out your Worm-Spit Idea Catalyst Detonator? Why aren’t people just sitting next to you and, like, just sitting next to you? For crissakes, you don’t smell that bad. It is, after all, designer perfume.

What you will realize, when you pull the worm out of your earlobe and dangle it in front of yourself between the Irving Park and Montrose Brown Line stops, is that you are spending far too much time thinking about all this and that’s not how one becomes a world premier trapeze artist. Since being a world premier trapeze artist is your lifelong goal, you should spend your looking-out-the-window time to plan the development of your world premier circus, in which there will be people who will sit next to you any time of the day and say things like, “I like your socks.” You won’t have to use your Worm-Spit Idea Catalyst Detonator on them because the people in your world premier circus will just tell you what they’re thinking. You’ll have to learn how to get used to that, though.

2010-05-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

SOMEBODY’S IN-BETWEEN GIRL

Let’s say one day you’re skipping down a path and you come up to the proverbial fork in the road. Most people don’t know, but “proverbial” is also a term of art that means “heavy with charms,” which let’s say this proverbial fork in the road is. As you were skipping down this path, before you hit the fork, you had in mind some good stuff for your future.

Let’s say you see the ideal future in terms of red velvet cake. You’re not naïve, you don’t expect it to be the perfect red velvet cake, at least not at all times, but for the most part, you know in your heart that a red velvet cake future is right up your alley and you’re willing to take the ups with the downs, because, after all, the name alone is worth constructing goals around.

So at this proverbial fork, there are, hanging from the wise old willow tree, along with the willow’s natural jewelry (long branches draped like heavily jeweled necklaces), charms. You can see them flash as they spin and catch the sun. Each charm tells you something about your red velvet cake future. There is the clear blue pool of pure water, there is the champagne flute filled with diamonds, there is the adorable fuzzy teddy bear.

You look down the path on your left. There are birds chirping down there. It smells like a fresh, healthy forest. Are the vague dancey notes of a horn section coming from far away? (Yes.) Because you are an exhauster of options, a think-through-it kinda human, a Planner with a Capital P, you take a look down the right path. Not much to see here, folks. And yes, that putrid stench and low, painful wail is in fact coming from the same entity. You shuffle back over to the left path.

As you turn, you run into an unscrolled scroll, floating at face height and flapping in the soft breeze like a shirt on a clothesline. You peel it off your face and read:
1. This is just a path. Right now you’re reading way more into it than is actually here.
2. On the other side, you may run into any, all, or none, of the following, in whatever combination is legally permissible by law: soul-shattering heartbreak, chronic indigestion, a variety of OCD-related disorders, citizenship in a land ruled by ego-infested robots on power trips, an unthinkable shortage of high-quality footwear.
3. Later, when you say you never saw it coming, remember this sign.
4. This is just a path.

Because you are A Planner, you sit down on a mushroom that was ripped off from the set of Alice in Wonderland, and you think Really Big Thoughts. You can hear the horn section and the clink of charms like wind chimes behind you. What you don’t notice is: the clear blue pool of pure water is saturated with poisonous chemicals, the champagne flute is cracked and that’s zirconia, and the adorable teddy bear is hanging by a noose.

At this point, you are thinking critically. You’re thinking that there are possibilities that you haven’t considered, but you feel confident that you have enough information to make an informed decision about which path to take. You take nothing for granted. You make no assumptions. You completely ignore numbers 1 and 4 from the unscrolled scroll flapping like a shirt from a clothesline that you had to peel off your face.

Now let’s say at this point I come along. I would bring with me my chaise lounge, also ripped off from the set of Alice in Wonderland, and set up shop next to you on your mushroom. My butler would produce from his shirt sleeve a tea set made of priceless china that he would set upon a silver tray engraved with ancient words of prayer thought to bestow upon its owner powers beyond the imagination. Because I am grounded and humane, I choose not to abuse these powers. Also, sometimes they make my face break out.

Once my tea set is set up and prepared, while my butler then gives me a manicure (buffed, clear polish), I explain to you your Red Velvet Cake Future. I explain it so well that you get it on every level—emotional, mental, physical, spiritual. You get it so thoroughly you feel it viscerally, as if you actually lived through it already and you know, right down to your very raw nerve endings, that I am so not bullshitting you when I say: the Red Velvet Cake Future is not actually Red Velvet Cake.

You know this to be true, of course. First, you are still understanding things on multiple levels, you clever bastard, and fourth, now you’re starting to think you’ve already been taught this lesson before and you pride yourself on your quick ability to learn, it’s a skill set that’s served you well since high school. Besides, you think, this person stretched out languorously on the chaise lounge with the tea and the butler and the manicure—how can you not trust a woman who wears alligator shoes with the teeth still in place?

Still…if the Red Velvet Cake Future actually did work out…

Would you walk down the Red Velvet Cake path? You would, wouldn’t you.

Sucker.

2010-05-24T06:00:00.000-05:00

ONE OF THESE DAYS YOU’RE GONNA FALL

This parking ticket has been staring me in the face for two weeks. Sometimes I go to the bathroom, and it’s already in there, waiting on the edge of the sink. I’m tempted to flick it right on its “Save a stamp, pay online” corner. I suspect that part’s its eye. I’ve already tried to drown it. It’s still here. For paper, it’s oddly resilient.

I flick the parking ticket anyway. It wobbles on the side of my bathroom sink. If it had arms, they’d be outstretched and moving in small circles, the way cartoon characters do right before they fall off a cliff/mountain/rooftop/kitchen table. The parking ticket kerplunks into the sink. For a millisecond I feel bad. You would understand if you saw my bathroom sink—entities that are destined for hell wind up in a place significantly cleaner than my bathroom sink.

By the time I get to the kitchen—it’s quite a way, there’s the winding staircase, the long corridors with oil paintings of old men in white wigs and lots of women with corsets (this wasn’t my idea, I hired a “house stylist” in the ‘70s,when that was the thing to do, and, stupidly, I was completely unnerved by his ability to turn my name into homonyms, and I fell madly in love and let him have his way with the east wing. I know, I know, when will I learn? (You should see the stables—not my proudest moment.) And then there’s the courtyard with the cobblestones and I don’t mind saying, that’s a real pain to run across with diamond shoes and of course, there’s that long stretch of moving sidewalk through the west wing and the next time I say I am in a “techy phase,” shoot me).

Finally, I was in the kitchen. And who’s already there? The parking ticket. This jerk won’t die, man. One thing’s confirmed at this point, though—the “Save a stamp, pay online” square is, indeed, his eye. I walk casually to the “stove.” I’m not quite sure how to use this contraption. I was told in order for this room to qualify as a “kitchen,” it had to have a “stove.” Zoning regs, I guess. I just come here because this is where the wine is. Usually red, in crystal goblets.

I pull a crystal goblet to my lips and as I do, I glare across the room at the parking ticket. And suddenly, we have this connection. It’s like out of that movie about the two football dudes who grow up together and go pro and one of them gets Lou Gehrig’s disease and dies and the other one goes back to college where he meets this amazingly brash, independent woman and ohmygod! the greatest love EVER, but then he goes to the army and she becomes a hippy and they get into political fights and break up and then one day they see each other from across the street at a pro-war/anti-war rally and they have this connective stare that binds them together forever because they will always be The One That Got Away to each other and then I think Earth is attacked by aliens and the film ran over budget so they ended it there.

Anyway, that’s the kind of stare I had across my enormous kitchen with the parking ticket. I move away from the “stove.”

I teleport to my movie theater in the basement, next to the wine cellar. You are correct. The parking ticket beats me there. “This is getting creepy,” I tell it.
“You’re telling me. Usually people pay after they meet me in their bathroom,” he says.
He has this way of twitching his right corner that is somewhat endearing.
“Wussies,” I say.
“Yeah, it’s a bit of a bully game, really.”
“There’s something I can’t quite reconcile about the cops issuing tickets on machines owned by a private company,” I admit.
Parking ticket says, “Home of the mandatory wrought-iron fence. Home of the overnight-disappeared airport.”
“Righto,” I say. And then, “I still call it Comiskey.”
“I still call it Marshall Field’s.”
“I have dial-up internet connection.”
“Pay me on Tuesday.”

2010-05-20T06:00:00.001-05:00

MAYBE IT'S YOU

The problem with a single, ferociously intelligent, sparkle-witted woman is: She makes you realize how pathetic you are for defining yourself through your partner.

And she doesn't apologize for it.

2010-05-12T06:00:00.000-05:00

THINK YOU GOT ME CONFUSED FOR A BETTER MAN

Sometimes you feel so raw you wonder if you’ll ever heal.

I don’t know why they do it, but the weather peeps on the 10:00 news seem to take much time to tell what the weather was before they get around to what the weather will be. This confuses me. Every night I wonder about it, I don’t mind saying. What’s confusing is, if you made it through the day, and you’re watching the news, you already know this information; and if you didn’t make it through the day, you’re probably not watching the weather report on the 10:00 news. “Must send letter,” I thought to myself as I drifted to sleep on the couch. I write very effective letters. Corporate entities really enjoy hearing from me.

Rules of Planet Kim:
* Inanimate objects reply;
* Citizens are defined by their partnership with their preferred writing utensil;
* Exclamation marks are banned by executive order and no you most certainly do not get an opportunity to speak on the exclamation marks’ behalf in front of a jury of its peers, this isn’t a democracy, fancy pants.

Planet Kim looks suspiciously similar to: Key West, the Caribbean, New York, Paris, depending upon the time portal by which you enter.

I issue the laws with the help of my Council—a purple Sharpie, a Pilot Precise V5 Rolling Ball Extra Fine Point in blue, and a green medium point felt tip “pen,” that’s leaning very close to marker-dom, but we’re not judging here. My Grama used to use a pen/marker like this. She used to write in cards: “I love you, Kimme.” That’s how she spelled my name. I still have those cards.

Laws of Planet Kim:
* Law #1—Every Sunday is community dinner night. Except dinner night starts during the day because Sunday afternoons are melancholy incarnate and besides, I’m severely self-conscious about my cooking. Sometimes it’s hard to get the writing utensils to cook (lack of opposable thumbs seems to make them sketchy decision makers when faced with intense heat and sharp knives), but they eventually figure out a way. The writing utensils on Planet Kim are not functionally fixated.

* Law #2—Everyone has to check in with at least three (3) people each week. Not the same three (3) people every week, different ones. And by “people,” I’m including you, lead pencils. Lead pencils have a tendency to be standoffish, but really that’s because they’re shy, don’t let the leather and the loud music scare you.
Checking in is defined as: making human contact with another human or writing utensil. The point is to let another entity know you’re thinking about them so that they go through their days knowing there are people in the world who are thinking of them.

* Law #3—I pushed for a weekly talent show, but as the Council pointed out, we’re dealing with people who floss with quantum physics, so I’m sure you can imagine the complexity of the acts. Algorithms need space to bloom, and by “space,” I mean “time,” because the two (2) are the same on Planet Kim, which is why the talent show is a monthly occurrence. Sometimes, though, the monthly talent show is really an Allman Brothers concert.

The fountain woke up.

2010-04-12T14:58:00.001-05:00

Bring it, Summer.

2010-04-05T06:00:00.000-05:00

COME OUT AND PLAY

I'll be telling a story with the fine folks from Reading Under the Influence, this Wednesday, at Sheffield's, 7pm. More info here.

Come on out--it's a great time. AND SUMMER IS COMING, TIME TO GET OUT AND WELCOME IT!

Tonight! 2nd Story & Dating for Nerds!

2010-04-01T11:50:00.001-05:00

Co-hosted event at Holiday Club! Irving and Sheridan! 7pm! I'm telling a story! Come on out!

I like showing up early to movies, but

2010-03-27T16:37:00.001-05:00

when the theater's empty, it seems like overkill. And a bit like a game of Clue.

2010-03-26T06:00:00.000-05:00

POWER LOVE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Dear Sirs,
As requested, here is the Executive Summary for the Power Love Variety Hour. I took the liberty of checking one flimsily constructed website to research the elements of a proper Executive Summary because I am very serious about the world-dominating impact the Power Love Variety Hour will have on the world and possibly the galaxy if there’s a means of communication with the rest of the galaxy, I don’t know, I haven’t explored this aspect in my Executive Summary because there wasn’t a line item for it on the template, but if it’s an avenue to explore in order to facilitate the world-dominating impact of the Power Love Variety Hour on the world and possibly the galaxy, then please send more money.

Delineated below are the five required sections of the Power Love Variety Hour Executive Summary. The website said I should also have a “business plan.” The business plan explanation was really long, and it was boring, and once I saw the term “net operating income,” I fell asleep, which was unfortunate since I was, at the time I was reading about business plans, skydiving. I have decided not to include a business plan herein.

Executive Summary
Power Love Variety Hour
2010

Goal: To convince you to support, by whatever means most comfortable to you, the production of the Power Love Variety Hour. We are also accepting gifts of space that we can make a stage out of, and beer.

I. Business Concept
The Power Love Variety Hour is a 75-minute show of circus-like proportions that’s been slightly scaled back. Originally, I had planned on seals juggling beach balls and men dressed dandily, tip toeing across tight ropes. This vision may have been inspired by a poster I saw at the Quincy Brown Line stop and you know any idea advanced by the CTA has success written all over it.

It must be noted that currently, there isn’t actually any space in which the Power Love Variety Hour is actually existing, which is good because we’re flexible, but I would be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that a general lack of existence is a trigger for multiple existential meltdowns.

On the upside, I have choreographed a Bob Fossi tribute dance, complete with top hat and fishnets, which will be performed to Tom Petty’s “Don’t Come ‘Round Here No More” (we will of course edit the lyrics for grammar). In addition, I am polishing my stand-up comedy routine, which includes (spoiler alert!) making paper airplanes out of Domino’s menus and sailing them across the room.

We will be holding auditions for other acts. Apply now.

II. Financial Features
Because I use a proprietary algorithm that I invented, I can tell you that financial forecasts for this venture predict a windfall of profits and adulation that will continue for years until the last Power Love Variety Hour episode, after which we will gracefully walk away from the spotlight after having influenced the variety hour world, the entertainment world, and the entire planet in ways so profound words will have to be created in order to describe it.

III. Financial Requirements
What we really need to get this project off the ground is human capital—peeps with big dreams, open hearts, and a nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic. More than likely, we’ll need hallucinatory drugs.

IV. Current Business Position
Except for the debilitating existential meltdowns, we’re all good here.

V. Major Achievement
We’re Jeff-award winning because, who isn’t? In addition, we don’t leave rotting food in the refrigerator and we usually clean up after ourselves in the bathroom, except when things get really busy, then cleanliness slips through the cracks, but we’ll pay more attention to this in the future.

VI. Concluding Remarks
In this age of economic uncertainty, what is certain? Only uncertainty. Why should you throw 100% of your support at the Power Love Variety Hour? Because in uncertain times, the Power Love Variety Hour is about as uncertain as you can get. Please contact us at your earliest convenience. Thank you for your support.

2010-03-20T06:00:00.000-05:00

TANGLED

Outside it’s raining—spring rain, which means it’s a fine mist one minute and a torrential downpour the next. In her mud room, she unzips her yellow rain coat and shimmies out of it. Boots kicked into the corner. Hat flipped on the wall hook. She has to take her sweater and jeans off before she can unzip her head, but once she does, she’ll be invisible. She pulls the zipper from her forehead to the nape of her neck and takes off her body like she’s stepping out of a fur coat. She hangs it on the hook next to her hat.

In the kitchen, he’s on the counter, in the silver-rimmed bowl her mother gave her. There are streaks of gray light oozing through the window over the sink. In it, he looks like brain matter, but she knows that once she gets the lights on and the tea pot going, he’ll be back to his cherry red, jelly norm.

She’s filling the tea pot when he says, “I forgot to pick up my prescription.” She makes a face that he can’t see, but he can feel it. “I know. I know. I’m sorry. I was rushing home. I wanted to be home. I forgot,” he says.

She looks out the window at the kids playing tag in the yard next door. She could give them the finger. She could dance naked in front of them. “How many pills do you have left? Enough for tonight?”

He jiggles in the bowl. He is almost opaque, but on his edges, she can see through him to the bowl underneath—like Jell-O, she thinks. His cherry red casts a blood-like tint on the flowers decorating the bowl. “I took the last one last night.” He pauses his customary pause. “I’m sorry.”

“The last thing I want to do right now is put my body back on and go out there,” she says.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Of course, it’ll take me less time than it’ll take you. It takes you forever to pour yourself back into your spine.”
“True.”

She pours the water into her mug, then dunks a tea bag in there. From across the room, he can see the string of the tea bag being pulled then dropped, pulled then dropped. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Of course you are,” she says. “You’re always sorry.”

He thinks about that for a second. He sees apologies like periods—the declarative sentence, the end stop. She sees apologies like a trampoline—it’s the thing you jump off of on your way to taking action. “You can’t change people,” her mother told her when she presented the bowl to her daughter. Now, as she walks back to the mud room, she thinks about how she could put her body back on and walk away. But then, she doesn’t know anyone else she could drink tea with while she’s invisible.

Happy Grammar Day!

2010-03-04T14:31:00.001-06:00

2010-02-19T06:00:00.000-06:00

THE HAPPY EXPERIMENT

February sucks. It takes forever even though it’s short, and everyone scowls, myself included, I am an Olympic-level scowler, I would not lie about this, and apparently scowling gives you wrinkles and causes cancer so now we’re all gonna die. Just wanted to pass that along in case you were doing something stupid like having a good day.

The scowls represent what we are all thinking: I hate you as much as you hate me and it would be wonderful if you’d go screw yourself immediately; oh, and don’t forget—come to my play/reading/gig/art opening/fund raiser this weekend. Thanks!

Then I was struck by a Really Big Idea, which came to me in the form of a clump of snow that fell from the 3,456th floor of a building and landed on my foot and no, that didn’t hurt, not at all, and you’ll be happy to note my ballet career is still strong and vibrant. (Come to my recital this weekend! Thanks!)

The Really Big Idea was: The Happy Experiment. One of many things I loved about being in New Orleans last month was that people looked you in the face and smiled. This maybe had something to do with the fact that I was passing out 100-dollar bills everywhere I went. Hence, I figured if I walked around Chicago smiling, I would receive smiles and therefore rescue February from Suck Assery (SA).

I decided to implement the Happy Experiment on a Monday morning because I am brilliant and I have a death wish.

Subject #1
I was walking toward him and as there were no other living entities around, Subject #1 became Subject #1. I smiled. He did not. I leaned my head to the side and stared my Bionic Man stare at him. He made eye contact. I smiled. He did not. Clearly, he was an alien. Which is great. We don’t judge here. But rush-hour-connection-building via smiles may be an experiment best left to a pool of humans. (Which, by the way, is the name of my alt-country band, Pool of Humans, and we’re playing this Sunday at the Congress, $5, so come on out and show some support! Thanks!)

Subject #2
Subject #2 was actually humanity in aggregate. (My band, Humanity in Aggregate, will be ripping the walls off Metro this Friday, so come out and show some support! Thanks!) As I was walking down the street, skipping, as I’m wont to do, along came a mass of humans from the other direction. Surely, said I to me, this is the data set I’ve been waiting for. And don’t call me Surely. That joke doesn’t really work when written. And then all of humanity—by which I mean the mass of humans walking toward me—coalesced into one giant head, and wow, was that a mess because as it turns out, Humanity can’t figure out whether to laugh or cry, but with all those humans coagulated together, you can bet there was much discussion about it (“We should cry, the world is miserable!” “We should laugh, the world is miserable!” “Don’t blame me, I voted for Mondale!” “If you brushed your teeth, then you could get rid of that smell!” “I hate American Idol.”), which I chose to walk away from because I am conducting the Happy Experiment and I really don’t have time to listen to others.

Subject #3
I ran into Subject #3 as I crossed Wacker. This is the part of my morning commute when I sincerely wonder how bad it would be if the air was toxic. Not too bad, is usually my conclusion. Because there is construction along this section of my walk, I am forced to get in line behind other walkers and pick my way through a very narrow path, usually at a rate that is so slow, it actually turns time backwards, which is good because then I have time to think, but bad because then I have time to think.

I was walking and looking down, because when you’re enacting the Happy Experiment and you want to smile at other humans, looking down at the snow-covered ground is the best way to accomplish that goal. Unfortunately, I missed the fact that the line of humans I was following had stopped, and so I crashed into Subject #3, who was a tall, gangly woman holding many bags. More unfortunately, I didn’t realize I had run into Subject #3 because of the aforementioned Really Big Thoughts I was thinking (hamburgers).

“Excuse you,” said Subject #3. She readjusted a bag on her right shoulder. One of the bags on her left shoulder slipped.
“What?” I said, because I am very erudite.
“I said, ‘Excuse you.’”
“Oh. Well, thank you, but I didn’t sneeze. It might’ve been—”
“YOU JUST RAN INTO ME.”

I looked around. I had to admit, I was standing exceptionally close to her, in a spot where I didn’t actually need to be standing exceptionally close to her. In addition, it appeared that I couldn’t account for my thoughts for the preceding 5 minutes, so I couldn’t argue the obvious, which was that I was darning my socks so I could give them away to the poor orphans that I was at that moment going to visit and read stories to. So instead I smiled. She tapped her foot. The light was red and I believed at the time the light was going to stay red indefinitely. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to run into you,” I said, and then I smiled. Again. She did not return my smile.

“I like your bag,” I said, thinking I’d be able to successfully prove that the Happy Experiment was brilliant and then I’d win the Nobel Prize for Human Development and Excellent Shoe Collections and that would propel me to international stardom, which I would use to promote break dancing education in schools, because I cannot break dance or pop and lock and this is something I’ve been ashamed of since high school. “I don’t care,” the lady said. And then she crossed the street because the light was green and, apparently, not staying red indefinitely.

I am sorry to report that I haven’t saved February from Suck Assery (SA). I believe my reasoning is sound, but humankind is not. I will have to re-evaluate my methods, which I will do in New Orleans while I’m on tour with my funk punk band, February Is For Losers. (We’ll be playing on the corner of Bourbon and Bienville this Saturday, so come on out and show some support! Thanks!)

2010-02-03T17:51:00.000-06:00

SWEEP THE LEG JOHNNY GAME REPORT

First, this important announcement: The winner of the Power Love February Pun of the Month is: Christopher Jobson!

How can someone win the coveted Power Love Pun of the Month Award on only the second day of the month? I’ll tell you how—this is Chicago, we take care of our friends, quit asking stupid questions.

So Christopher’s mom makes magic hollandaise sauce. Everyone knows this. And this one Christmas, Christopher and his mom were driving to the White House for dinner, and a snow storm hit and they toppled over into a ditch.

During yesterday’s broomball double header, Sweep the Leg Johnny, America’s favorite broomball team, also dealt with a snow storm. A snow storm of death. Because that’s what we bring—natural-disaster-level intensity.

Unfortunately, during the first game, the goals kept moving. And the entire Sweep the Leg Johnny roster was suddenly struck with rickets. And we were playing on a field covered in mountainous snow banks. And, we were playing against robots.

When Christopher and his mom scrambled out of their car that toppled over into the ditch, they quickly realized the magic hollandaise sauce was oozing all over the back seat. “What should we do?” asked the blue hummingbird on Christopher’s shoulder.

In Sweep the Leg Johnny’s second game of the night, we played against aliens. Last week, we called this team the brown team and we liked them. This week, one of them elbowed Byron My Jeans Are Sweet Yours Suck Flitsch, so Byron ate the opponent. The brown team stopped being friendly after that. (The brown team is way too sensitive.) Kyle Collapse Into The Crease Harmon scored a righteously beautiful goal and we were on our way to stardom. Or so we thought.

As the hollandaise sauce oozed over the back seat of the toppled car, Christopher and his mom pried a hub cap off the wheel and collected as much of the sauce as they could.

The brown team was bionic. Bionic aliens are genetically engineered to play broomball at obscene levels of agility. Sweep the Leg Johnny ended up not winning. Apparently, in broomball, you only get points for goals, not style.

When Christopher and his mom arrived at the White House, the King of Malaria sneered at the hollandaise sauce when it was presented. The blue hummingbird, insulted but maintaining composure, said, “Your majesty, there’s no plate like chrome for the hollandaise.”

Donations for the Sweep the Leg Johnny Relief Fund and Comedy Tour may be sent to Kim Morris. Cash only. Watch Christopher Jobson receive his Power Love Pun of the Month Award on tonight’s episode of “Chicago Tonight.”

2010-01-21T06:00:00.000-06:00

WAKE UP CALL

The call came from Collingsworth, NJ. I know this because my voicemail at work goes straight to my computer and it tells me all kinds of details: where the call originated from, where it traveled as it transferred around the office, how long the message lasts. This call came directly to me and it lasted 32 seconds.

“Chris, this is Delores. It’s about 1:30 on Wednesday afternoon. Could you please call me tonight? I need…I need...I need someone to read at mass for your father. Will you please do it? Please call.”

My name is not Chris. My mom’s name is not Delores. My dad isn’t having a mass for him, as far as I know. I called Delores back.

“Hello?” She said.
“Hello, may I speak to Delores please?”
“Who’s this?”
“My name is Kim Morris, I—”
“Hold on. I have to switch phones. I can’t hear you. Hold on.”
“OK.”
“It’s going to sound like I’m hanging up on you because you’re going to hear a click, but I’m not. I’m just switching phones. I can’t hear you. Hold on.”
“OK.”
“Hello?”
“Hello, is this Delores?”
“Yes. Who are you?”
“I’m Kim Morris—”
“Who?”
“Kim Morris, I—”
“Kim who?”
“Morris.”
“I don’t know you.”
“No, but it looks like you may have left a message on my voicemail that was intended for someone else and I just thought you might want to know…it sounded…important, and I just wanted you to know—”
“Where are you calling from?”
“Chicago.”
“Chicago? Not upstate New York? I was trying to reach upstate New York.”
“No, I’m in Chicago.”
“What’s your number there?”
I told her. She told me the number she was trying to reach was one number off from mine.
“Funny, isn’t it?” I said. “One number off, but still half the country away.”
“My husband just died.”
“Oh…oh, I’m so sorry, are you—”
“We need someone to read for his service at church.”
“I’m so sorry. I’m just so…”
“Thank you for calling to let me know.”
“OK—if there’s anything, I mean—”

But she had already hung up.

2010-01-17T22:29:00.001-06:00

2010-01-15T21:53:00.001-06:00

New Orleans with The Mommers

2010-01-14T11:52:00.001-06:00

I found this woman at the airport. She's really cool. I'm gonna hang out with her for a while.

2010-01-06T06:00:00.000-06:00

BRAIN DEADITUDE

Last night my country estate was invaded by zombies. I had previously spent the last ten days engaging in activities that proactively melted my brain, such as watching paint dry. Occasionally, I stared out the window at my neighbor’s roof because the squirrels that tap danced there weren’t going to watch themselves.

The zombies who invaded my country estate weren’t just any old zombies. They were eco-zombies. Green zombies. Health-conscious, nutrition-focused. These zombies exist. And they like healthy brains.

I’m sure you can see where this is going. Two months ago, I lost my country estate in a card game. Apparently, simply having four aces in your hand isn’t the way to win Go Fish. So then I was like, “Shit.”

Obviously, I had to get my country estate back. So I called the CIA and they gave me my secret ops job back, which I quit a few years ago after I won the Pulitzer. I can’t say I was all too happy about this—not to insult anyone, but being a secret op is the kind of job you can do with your eyes closed.

Once I was rehired by the CIA, I was tempted into double agenting for the government of a small, anonymous island, but I felt guilty after the first job because I pay taxes here in the U.S. and it feels wrong to double agent the same peeps I want to manage the interstate highway system and the mail delivery system. So then I ended up quitting secret agenting altogether because they cut my benefits and frankly, I was underappreciated.

But I still didn’t have my country estate, and the four-year old who stole it from me in that treacherous card game of Go Fish let it fall into disrepair. It was too much to bear. It made me want to pull out my hair.

That’s when I went to the annual conference for health-conscious zombies. It was at the Holiday Inn in Myrtle Beach. I recruited an army of zombies, which was not easy because zombies on vacation are not highly motivated. But I promised them good, brainy treats if they successfully completed my plan (which was: the zombies eat the four-year old card shark, I commandeer my country estate, the zombies leave).

The eco-zombies were like, “We only eat organic, you know.” And I was like, “OK, and hoity toity la la la to you.” And thus, the agreement was solidified. We got rid of the petulant four-year old land baron, I commandeered my country estate, and the zombies left. I never thought about it again.

I’m sure you can see where this is going. When the eco-zombies knocked on the door of my country estate last night, I was like, “Whatever.” And they were like, “You made a deal.” And they were right, the four-year old card shark land baron wasn’t really what they had in mind when I promised them good, brainy treats, and also, the eco-zombies smelled and they were stomping on the azaleas on my front porch and it took me a long time to get those azaleas to bloom.

I was like, “A deal’s a deal, you can eat my brain.” And do you know what they did? Collectively they said, “No thanks.” No thanks. Can you believe it? I’m like, “You guys suck.” Which was unprofessional, sure, but I’m proud of my brain. It keeps my head from deflating. “YOU suck,” the eco-zombie mob said in unison. “And your brain smells like Gossip Girl reruns and carrot-flavored baby food. We like fresh, critical-thinking brains that pursue pure and natural thoughts.”

Yuppies.

So now I owe the eco-zombie mob an organic brain, which I’m having a hard time finding. They don’t sell those at Stanley’s.

2009-12-14T15:06:00.001-06:00

2009-12-10T06:00:00.001-06:00

THE MEMORY SPECIALIST

“This isn’t a mallet in my hand, I’m just glad to see you.”

The guy behind the counter didn’t laugh. This was unfortunate because I did laugh, hysterically, so then it just looked like I was losing my mind. And then I snorted. Thus, my credibility was in shambles.

The reason I was trying to gain credibility in the first place was because the dude behind the counter was a whack job and I was trying to prove it to him. In the real world, he would be called a “carnie.” In the world I’m describing to you now, though, he was called a “memory specialist.” I know this because not only did he introduce himself as such, he also had a blazing red fireball on the front of his booth and inside the fireball, in yellow cursive letters, was, “TOM. MEMORY SPECIALIST.” I told him I thought he might try to snazz up the “Tom” part of that sign. He told me “Kim” wasn’t much on the snazz, so what did I know?

I thought he was a carnie because he stood inside a booth with stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling, most of them poultry, and he frequently called out, “Three tries, one dollar!” to the passersby. Occasionally, a loud beep would ring out and the lights on the back wall of the booth would erupt in primary colors. There was a water spout, set up to look like Buckingham Fountain, but it was broken.

Tom didn’t consider himself a carnie. Tom considered himself a memory specialist. At the time I met him, I just so happened to need a memory specialist. The week before, NASA erased my memories, on account of all the top secret secrets I knew and also because I kept crank calling NASA HQ and belching the alphabet.

So after a week without memories, I was kinda wondering who I was. I ended up at the carnival, where everyone should go when they can’t figure out who they are. I was at the fried-pickle-dipped-in-chocolate-and-sprinkled-with-powdered-sugar-on-a-stick booth. When I turned around, there was Tom, leaning out of his booth, waving me over. Or maybe he was swatting mosquitoes.

“Three tries for what?” I asked. Then I took a huge bite of chocolate-covered fried pickle. Then I gagged. Those things are gross, but they’re on a stick, so how can you not love them?

“One dollar, three tries for all the memories you can handle,” Tom said, in a voice that sounded strangely similar to Mr. Roark’s from Fantasy Island.

“I’ll take that deal,” and then I took another bite of fried chocolate pickle on a stick. That bite also made me gag. Tom pointed to the yellow square on the counter in front of me. “When I say go, this square will light up. You will see nine holes. Each hole has a trajectory of your memories that will manifest themselves into the shape of a basketball. It will be a clear basketball, you will be able to see inside it. The basketballs will pop out of the holes, you get to decide if you want to look at it, or whack it. Got it?”

I took another bite of fried chocolate pickle on a stick. I think the trick with those things is you gotta get to the middle, then it gets good. I mean, it’s fried and it’s covered in chocolate, you really can’t lose with that combo. Anyway, a bunch of chocolate ended up oozing off the stick and onto my shirt and perhaps there might have been a bit of powdered sugar on my chin and maybe I was talking with my mouth full. “You can’t herd my memories into basketballs and then play Whack-A-Mole with them,” I said to Tom. “You can’t eat politely, but you’re still eating,” he said.

The man made a good point. I gave him a dollar. He handed me an oversized mallet with a large foam head. This is when I made my extraordinarily funny joke about how there wasn’t a mallet in my hand, I was just happy to see him.

It was A MALLET with a LARGE FOAM HEAD. I’m sure you understand how difficult it was for me to refrain from punning.

Tom slipped the dollar into a tray on his left and then he whistled. Suddenly, the poultry hanging from the ceiling started doing a kick line, much like the Rockettes, but I could only really see their webbed feet and their knobby knees, so I’m not sure they were all smiley like the Rockettes, but they were in sync. The fountain in the back of the booth started sprouting water, which I think was really a leak from the shoot-the-boat booth on the other side of Tom’s.

And then the square in the counter in front of me lit up, just like Tom said it would. A basketball-like object popped out of the center hole and inside it there I was, in Monaco, sitting on a throne next to some prince-looking dude. I smashed the memory with the mallet. “That’s not mine,” I told Tom. I took a bite of pickle stick.

“Sure?”
“Yes. I’ve never been the princess of Monaco.”
Tom looked at the chocolate blob on my shirt. “No, I suppose you haven’t. Ready?”

He pressed a button and basketballs started popping up all over the place—the top right corner of the square in front of me, the bottom left corner, each one filled with very vivid images: me in a green dress accepting an Academy Award; me at the United Nations delivering a speech; me at the top of Mount Everest. I whacked each basketball and down they went into the black holes in the counter.

“Hey, man,” I said to Tom, “gimme my dollar back.” Pickle sticks were a dollar.
“You got one more round,” Tom said.
“Bring it,” I told him. I chomped down on the last bite of pickle chocolate stick goo, flipped the stick into the air, and readied my mallet. Out of the center hole, a basketball popped up and immediately, I smashed it because I have cat-like reflexes.
“Sure about that?” Tom asked.

I watched the basketball I had just smashed. It was slowly disintegrating and when I really looked at it, I could see the house I grew up in—Christmas morning, I was little, my Mom and Dad were holding an orange banana seat bike between them, both of them smiling. I could see myself in front of the bike, bouncing from foot to foot. If I remember correctly, the discussion I was having with my parents included but was not limited to how awesome it would be to ride my new bike down the sledding hill. I remember my Dad’s contagious, booming laugh; I remember how my Mom smelled like cinnamon when she hugged me. I remember being blissfully oblivious to how precious that moment really was.

And then it was gone. The memory disappeared down the center hole.

“I want that one,” I told Tom.
“Already gone. Sorry. Three more tries for a buck.”
“But I want that memory—the bike memory, Christmas, my parents, home, it was snowing that day, I rode my bike in the garage, we had ham sandwiches and watched parades on TV. I want that memory back.” I remember the snow on the gym set in the backyard—how it was piled in triangles along the monkey bars. I remember reminding myself not to put my tongue on a cold door/window/telephone pole.

I pulled another dollar out of my pocket. I remember summers with dandelions scattered like confetti, piles of orange leaves dancing around tree trunks, snow forts. The smell of pollen in the air. “Pickle sticks a dollar,” I said to Tom. “You want one?” Tom looked at my chin. I suspect he was wondering how to tell me about the line of powdered sugar draped there. “Yup,” he said.

Shoe Avalanche

2009-12-04T10:56:00.001-06:00

Not a bad way to go.

2009-11-13T06:00:00.000-06:00

DO VAMPIRES GET BLOOD CLOTS?

“Well, this is awkward,” I said to him.
“To say the least,” he said.

When I came to, I was floating on the ceiling of my southern gothic mansion. Once I registered where I was at, I looked down and saw myself, in mid-conversation with The Hot Vampire. He was standing just inside the doorway of the house. This did not surprise me as I have recently inhaled season one of True Blood and have been frequently falling into dreams about being somewhere other than where I’m currently at, often while vampires are present.

So there I was, in my southern gothic mansion, in the foyer—it was expansive, wood floors, marble carvings ingrained on the walls, crown molding, an elaborate parlor to my right, a Gone-with-the-Wind staircase rising into the darkness behind me.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I heard me say. I was wearing a white nightgown, of course, and I have to say, I was surprised I was pulling it off. White usually makes me look washed out. And I get really, really messy really, really quickly. Good thing I wasn’t drinking coffee. Or eating pasta with red sauce.

What I was doing in the foyer of my southern gothic mansion was standing there in a huff, my hands on my hips, just about to cluck my tongue. “I mean, really, you HAVE to be kidding me,” I said again.

Once I saw this PBS special on cuttlefish—they are excellent, they shimmer, they shape shift. The Hot Vampire’s eyes looked like shimmering cuttlefish. “No,” he said, “I’m really not kidding you.”

Since he was already standing inside, I assumed I had invited him in. Yet he was standing there as though he was about to leave. I touched my neck. Same old dumb neck I’ve always had. “It’s not contagious, you know. It’s just a blood disorder, which isn’t, like, transferable. Anyway, whadda you know about it, hot shot?”

“I know your blood likes to clot up when you’re not on blood thinners and runs like water when you are on blood thinners.”
“‘Blood thinners’ is a misnomer,” I snapped.

It is, you know, the blood thinners don’t actually thin your blood, they kinda just stop it from clogging up. But I had to admit, The Hot Vampire’s description of this tomfoolerytastic blood disorder was the best I’ve heard, and I’ve heard/read/researched a lot of descriptions about my blood disorder.

From the ceiling, I could see how The Hot Vampire stood in my foyer—feet shoulder width apart, arms hanging languorously at his sides, lips throbbing, complexion pale, eyes doing that shimmery-cuttlefish thing. This guy could pull off a waistcoat, alright. His was charcoal gray. His ruffled shirt underneath was crisp and not-messy. I bet he never washed a pair of red shorts with a load of whites. What a douche.

“This dream fuckin sucks,” I told The Hot Vampire.
“Ha! Good pun!”
“That wasn’t a pun.”
“Yes it was. Though it may have landed better if you had said, ‘You fuckin suck.’”
“It wasn’t a pun.”
“Yes it was.”
“No it wasn’t.”
“Yes it was.”
“NO. IT. WASN’T. AND WHY DON’T YOU WANT TO SUCK MY BLOOD?”

We both stood there facing each other but not looking at each other, both of us shifting awkwardly from foot to foot.

Finally he said, “You look pretty in that, um, dress?”
“Don’t patronize me, bloodsucker.”
“No, I mean, you know, it makes you look thin.”
“Because normally I look fat? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Um…no. No, I’m sure that is exactly not what I’m saying.”
“I think it is.”
“It’s not.”
“It is.”
“IT. IS. NOT.” He put his hands on his hips and started tapping the toe of his boot. “This really isn’t working out for me,” The Hot Vampire said.
“Well, it’s not working out for me, either,” I told him.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”

“I mean, it’s perfectly good blood, you know. It’s not like, you know, bad, you know,” I said.

I wasn’t so sure this was a true statement. Do vampires get blood clots? Is it kinda like eating curdled cottage cheese? Or maybe it’s way more dangerous, and I was proposing a fatal experience? Or maybe blood clots are like lumps in mashed potatoes, and some vampires like their potatoes with lumps and some don’t.

“I wish I didn’t just compare myself to mashed potatoes,” I told The Hot Vampire.
“You didn’t just compare yourself to mashed potatoes,” he said.
“Well, I did in my mind.”
“OK.”
“Aren’t you supposed to read my mind?”
“No.”
“No because you think my mind is wonky or no because vampires don’t read minds?”
“Yes.”
(If I was David Mamet, I would write “beat” here.)
“You know, you are not the romantic vampire I had intended you to be when I initially fell asleep on my couch.”
“Frankly, you are not the human I had intended you to be when I coerced you into having a dream about me when you initially fell asleep on the couch.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”

He started moving towards the threshold of the doorway. My southern gothic mansion had really beautiful stained glass windows in and around the doorway. The moonlight was slithering through the glass and painting prisms on the wood floor. It was a cool house. I should have a party there sometime. The Hot Vampire walked over the threshold and down the porch steps. It was a wrap-around porch. I love wrap-around porches.

Vampire fantasies really suck when the vampire rejects you.

2009-11-06T06:00:00.000-06:00

ALIEN

I have this hatbox that I somehow commandeered from my mom. It’s very Audrey Hepburn. Maybe a little more intensely-patterned that Ms. Hepburn seemed to prefer, but it’s, you know, a HATBOX, which is cool in that 1940s, Vogue-cover kind of way. My hatbox is yellow and black, the colors splattered around the rounded exterior like watercolors. The zipper groans when you pull it. Also, it’s magic.

One night, when I was very busy Procrastinating, I found in my hatbox, among other things, a random stream of Post-Its, yellow, medium-sized, the second stuck on top of the first, the third stuck on top of the second, and so on, so that when I pulled it out, it draped down like a cat unfurling its tail. Here’s what some of the notes said:

Random note #1: Clean bathroom.
I am proud of myself for using correct punctuation on this note. Although, right now I’m transcribing my own notes, so I’m sure you can smell the conflict of interest here. In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that there wasn’t a line or resounding X anywhere near this Post-It, which means I didn’t actually clean the bathroom.

Random note #2: ATPBOYG
I have no idea what this means. I’m really glad I left myself a note to remind me to use an alien language. Although, the closer I looked at this one, the more I realized that it WASN’T EVEN MY HANDWRITING. This should’ve been unnerving, but I was riding a high from the previous, correctly-punctuated Post-It and I like to grab the good times when I can. In the interest of full disclosure, I frequently write my grocery lists as a list of letters. For example, it’s very possible “ATPBOYG” means, “apples, toilet paper, baby oil, yogurt, granola.” Except I don’t know why apples would be on that list, I’m allergic to apples.

Random note #3: Do Not Look behind You.
I’ve always had a hard time with headline-style capitalization. What is one to do with prepositions? When they run six letters, they almost demand to be capped, but they’re PREPOSITIONS, and everyone knows you don’t cap prepositions. But let’s face it, Random note #3 looks dumb with a lower case “behind.” In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I’m kind of a grammar geek, which at times prevents me from seeing the obvious.

When I heard the creak behind me, I assumed it was the radiator, which is a sign of impending heat, which is awesome. I suppose my want of heat allowed me a moment of relaxation that I rarely indulge in, what with my superhero powers constantly at the ready, so when the voice behind me said, “You should pay attention to that one,” I jumped to the ceiling. Then I had to remind myself I had superhero powers, at which point I fell from the ceiling and banged my head on the floor. When I stood up, I turned towards the voice.

She was an alien. She was very tall and she had to stoop a bit to fit under the ceiling. She was green. She had three eyes, two red, the middle one yellow; four tentacles about chest high; and legs that looked like giant frog legs. Other than that, though, she looked pretty human.

“Oh,” she said, covering her three eyes with her left-most tentacle. “It’s just so EMBARRASSING.” Her mouth looked like a human mouth, but she had an orange tongue. “What’s so embarrassing?” I asked.

“All we were doing was coming to Earth for Halloween because we love it here, it’s like an amusement park for us, but man are you humans freaks about the green skin. Never saw any other planet freak out so much about it. So we usually come on Halloween, win a few costume contests, cruise home, no one’s the wiser. But this year, we overshot the planet and ended up showing up well after Halloween and look!” She thrust a magazine at me. Her nails were perfectly manicured.

The magazine was called GOSSIP! Just like that, all caps with an exclamation point. The cover had a bunch of thumbnail pictures of celebrities doing things like picking their noses or picking their wedgies, and the big picture, right in front, was a toe-to-head shot of the alien in my apartment, frozen in picture-time, in a moment just before falling flat on her face. Her eyes were bloodshot and glassy. She wore a purple scarf saucily tied around her neck. She had a martini glass in one hand. It looked like her giant frog legs were crumpling like paper towels. The tag line screamed: “Alcoholic Alien Finds Final Frontier!” And underneath, in small caps, “’Sobriety sucks!’ Alien says.”

“I like your scarf,” I finally said, handing the magazine back to the alien.
“I know, right? 100% silk. Five dollars.”
“No!” I said.
“I would not lie about accessories,” she said. “But that’s not the point! I know the royal purple of that scarf brings out the sparkle in my eyes, but I was not drunk! I wasn’t walking down the street with a martini! I don’t even like martinis!”

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I thought it, too. It’s really hard to grasp the concept of an accessory-savvy alien who doesn’t like martinis. “Well,” I said, nodding at the magazine in her perfectly manicured tentacle, “on the upside, there’s nothing in your teeth.”

“But I look better with stuff in my teeth! What is wrong with you humans? You know what? This is ridiculous. Why we even come to this stupid planet, I’ll never know.”

“Well, you know, we do have the Grand Canyon on Earth, which is pretty cool, and—”
“Oh, shut up! The Grand Canyon reminds me that I’m afraid of heights.”
“I suppose that must work against you when you’re in outer space.”
“Oh, shut up! Your human logic reminds me that you infuriate me.”
“I was only making the point that—”
“AARRGGGH!!!!”

When she yelled like that, she kinda sounded like Marge Simpson, but louder. Could my neighbors hear her? “We’re through with Earth,” the alien said. “We’re not coming back. You humans are exasperating.”

“Well, some of us aren’t so bad. I mean, maybe a small number of us, but all in all, you know, blanket generalizations are a bit harsh, considering—”

But she didn’t wait to hear what was about to be an excellently-rendered speech about not passing judgment, she just huffed at me, wagged a tentacle in my general direction, then marched out my front door.

So, humans, looks like I scared the aliens away. This is unfortunate because now how will we have science fiction? I’m afraid I have simultaneously broken relations with a galactic neighbor and destroyed an entire genre of art. In the interest of full disclosure, I had no plans to do any of that when I woke up that morning.

2009-10-30T06:00:00.000-05:00

COSTUMES

I can’t make costumes stick. This is why, each Halloween, I pretty much give up trying to come up with something creative and usually go as Kim Morris. Or, sometimes, Kim Morris in a Cowboy Hat. One year I wore all black, including a black cowboy hat, and I went as The Bad Guy. I’m pretty sure someone else suggested it. I suspect my aversion to costumes is a residual effect from the Halloweens of My Youth.

When I was growing up and Halloween rolled around, I was a fortune teller. Not just one year, many years in a row. The fortune teller costume was the ideal costume—long prairie skirt that I used to play Dress Up in, covering a pair of dirt-smudged jeans; a scarf tied around my waist with fringe that swayed and dangled whenever I moved; a pile of necklaces around my neck because somehow I figured necklaces gave me power to see into people’s futures; EARRINGS! A MATCHING PAIR! VERY GROWN UP! and another scarf, tied around my head, with more swanky fringe that gave me the air of someone who had been born in another century and knew All the Secrets of the World. My mom liked this costume because it took exactly four seconds to produce. Once I was the fortune teller, I would grab my candy bag, sprint out the door, and meet the kids from the neighborhood in the middle of the street.

First, we’d hit up the Hughes’s. The year I was seven, the Hugheses gave out secret spy masks. I mean, SECRET SPY MASKS! Upon receiving this gift, we thanked Mrs. Hughes, who was awesome because she never told my parents when I knocked over the plant on her front porch that one time during a football game, which was a stellar performance on my behalf because I totally pulled the ball OUT OF THE AIR and ran for a touchdown and no I was not out, don’t listen to anyone else on that one.

Anyway, SPY MASKS! Well, the only way to leave a front porch after having received a spy mask for Halloween is to dive roll over the front hedges. On Dorchester Drive, when I was seven, dive rolling was always the preferred method of extraction from a compromised position.

By the time I got to the Kodak house, the earrings were gone. And most of the prairie skirt was shredded and what wasn’t, I tied around my waist because it was making my getaways a bit of a hassle.

The Kodak house. Someone inside that house worked for Kodak, in some department that allowed access to and distribution of the coolest shit ever. One year, toy cameras. Another year, kaleidoscopes. The year I was seven, they gave out periscopes. PERISCOPES.

As I generally moved with the stealth of a tiger, positioning the periscope on my person was of the utmost importance. I devised a complex apparatus with my head scarf whereby through a series of intricately-knotted knots, I could secure my periscope on my back. This worked perfectly, though now my fortune teller costume was practically unrecognizable and it was unlikely I was going to be taken seriously later when, in all likelihood, I’d be summoned by the Queen to tell her her fortune.

At the Riley’s house, we got chocolate disks wrapped in gold foil. Gold coins were highly valued in our neighborhood-kid milieu. Obviously, this meant I had to untie the scarf from my waist and tie it around my face. Chocolate gold disks wrapped in gold foil demanded the delicate touch of a Wild West Outlaw. I was very careful leaving the Riley’s front porch—I imagined it as the saloon and beyond it, on the other side of the swinging doors, there would be my horse tied to the post and behind my horse, the sheriff and his deputy, waiting to have a talk with me about that bank robbery snafu.

Well, I was no dumb Wild West Outlaw, I’ll tell you, so my exit consisted of a few (admittedly secret-spy-esque) dive rolls, then a sprint to the curb, where I quickly untied my horse and took off down the street. What the Rileys saw before they closed their door was me dive bombing their front lawn, scraping my face with grass stains, then running to the street, jumping on an invisible horse, and galloping away with a high-pitched, “Yahoo!”

On my way home, I ran into Mr. Lesnewicz, who, judging by his facial expression, was astounded and in awe of my fortune teller turned secret spy turned Wild West Outlaw costume. I let him speak first, as that is the traditional way of greeting a masterminding-costume-producery kid. What he said was, “What the hell are you?”

One thing about Mr. Lesnewicz: he was not a big fan of the neighborhood kids. Apparently, he didn’t think our takeover of the yards during the International Ghost in the Graveyard Championships was justified.

“What does it look like I am?” I boomed.
“A mess.”
And then he walked away.

At this point, let’s recap the outfit: hair a nest of fuzz and curls with various forms of plant life stuck into it; a secret spy mask firmly clamped across my eyes; a scarf tied around the lower half of my face in a perfect ode to Jesse James; one lonely necklace desperately clinging to my neck; a t-shirt with grass stains and a dirty palm-print smacked on it; a prairie skirt shoved into the waist of my jeans; jeans smudged with more grass stains and more dirt. Most importantly, the periscope was still tied securely to my back, even though it was a bit dented after my last dive roll, which I took to be a clear indication that if I wanted to be a secret ops agent traversing a desert region, I could do so.

So, this is where I’m at now: how can I pick just one Halloween costume? What if I want to be a spaceship and I end up at a party where the king wants a divorce but the church won’t grant it? And then what happens if I get hungry, so I go to the Golden Nugget and order a hamburger and then I notice the baby blue 1966 Thunderbird convertible in the parking lot, which I would eye longingly while I mapped out an escape route to Mexico that would include empty desert roads and Brad Pitt? I don’t think a Henry VIII costume would be practical in that situation.

This costume-choosing thing is truly The Conundrum of Life, which is perhaps what I could be this Halloween, but I’m not quite sure what the physical manifestation of a conundrum is. Maybe there would be a magic wand involved?

Tonight! 2nd Story @ Red Kiva, 1108 W. Randolph, 7pm. GO!

2009-10-28T10:08:00.001-05:00

2009-10-21T06:00:00.000-05:00

COME ON OUT

Dear Alert Power Love Reader,
I'm telling stories all weekend this weekend--Friday at Strawdog Late Night and Sunday at Victory Gardens. Why don't you come on out and join in the fun and good storytelling, yeah? It will be grand. Grand, I tell you!

More info here.

2009-10-20T06:10:00.000-05:00

One of my stories is on CellStories today.

CHECK OUT THE LIGHT

2009-10-18T17:26:00.001-05:00

2009-10-16T06:00:00.000-05:00

ALL THE WISDOM THERE IS

Recently, I saw a mountain. It was pretty big. I saw the mountain because Eric pointed it out to me from the plane window. We were on my private jet, returning home from a Formula 1 race in Monaco. I own a Formula 1 race team. Also, I am a world-famous Formula 1 race car driver.

As it turned out, we took the long way home from Monaco, so ended up cruising through the West Coast of the mighty USA, and that’s when Eric tapped my shoulder and pointed out the window.

Sometimes I like to jump out of the window of my private jet, climb across the wing, make my adjustments with my private-jet toolset, then jump back inside the plane and finish off the caviar. This works well for me because there is usually an excessive amount of caviar on my jet.

When Eric tapped my shoulder, I turned to see this majestic mountain, standing across the kingdom from me, so I lifted the window and climbed out to the wing. Then I took a running jump, flew like Superman through the air, and, when I reached her, stepped gracefully on to the peak of Mt. Rainier.

“Hello,” I said.
“Hello,” she said.
“It seems to me you possess All the Wisdom There Is.”
“Yes.” She was filing her nails, but stopped when she saw I was settling in for a chat.
“Tea?” she asked.
“No thanks, I’m a coffee woman.”
“Not surprised.”

There was an awkward pause, so I took a minute to glance around. Mt. Rainier sets up a comfy home. She’s got an eye for color. She watched me curiously, which was unnerving because her eyes are also caves, so I kept expecting people or bears to walk out of them. “Umm…okay…so, about that wisdom,” I nudged.

She kept quietly looking at me. The trees sounded like a deck of cards being shuffled. A large bird-like creature snapped its wings. Somewhere water was running over rocks. “I should talk less more often,” I told the mountain. She smiled.

Mt. Rainier’s mouth is also the opening to an active volcano. One of the important lessons I’ve learned while participating in my jet-set lifestyle is how to spot a social cue. For example, when an active volcano opens up, this is a cue to leave.

So I bid a gracious adieu to the mountain. I took my patented running jump from the summit into the air and flew Superman-like over to my private jet. Once I got there, I dangled off the wing for a bit because it reminded me of playing on the monkey bars at recess. Then I hopped back in and plopped down on my chaise lounge.

“Eric,” said I.
“Yes, world-famous Formula 1 racer?”
“I have just come back from talking to the mountain and now I possess All the Wisdom There Is.”

This is when Eric mentioned something about straightjackets, but I had to ignore the comment because straightjackets don’t flatter my figure.

Faces on the Wall

2009-10-14T16:25:00.001-05:00

You Are So Beautiful to Me

2009-10-13T10:21:00.001-05:00

This mountain's like, "Yo. I'm a mountain. Of course I'm gorgeous."

2009-10-13T10:06:00.001-05:00

The Conundrum

Is this art or a mocha? More importantly, is there a difference?

The Importance of Punctuation.

2009-10-08T19:01:00.001-05:00

2nd Story 800? What does that mean? Oh! 2nd Story @ 8:00 p.m. Alert Power Love Reader: DO YOU SEE THE IMPORTANCE OF PUNCTUATION?

Keep Portland Weird.

2009-10-08T18:28:00.001-05:00

Amen.

'Sup, Portland!

2009-10-08T14:45:00.001-05:00

Yer purty.

Wow.

2009-10-08T09:42:00.001-05:00

2009-10-08T06:00:00.000-05:00

Remember that Simpsons episode when Mr. Burns went grocery shopping and he stood in the condiments aisle with a bottle of ketchup in either hand and kept looking from one to the other, repeating, "catch-up, cats-up, catch-up, cats-sup"? That was funny.

Jet plane leavin'

2009-10-08T03:13:00.001-05:00

Stay in love.

2009-10-03T09:18:00.001-05:00

2009-09-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

Hat with Occasional Lyrics

If you suspect I ripped off the title of this post from a Jonathan Lethem novel and then reconfigured it so it would appear as though I didn't rip off the title of this post from a Jonathan Lethem novel, you are correct.

Recently, I was walking down Belmont Avenue, eastward, to the lake, where I dock my yacht. I was wearing my cowboy hat because that's what one wears when one approaches a docked yacht, and as I was crossing Halsted, I noticed a tall, handsome man standing on the corner. He was still while others scrambled around him and if I didn't know that the city owned that corner, I would've assumed he did.

He wore a brown pin-striped suit, perfectly tailored, a blue tie knotted at his throat, and a pink bowler hat. Like, Bazooka bubble gum pink.I was impressed. The I-own-this-corner posture, the impeccably-fitted suit, THE PINK HAT.

As I walked up to him, what could I do but smile hugely? Own it dude, which I of course did not say because that is not something you say to a dude who is actually already owning it, and he caught my eye and we had A Moment. A Hat Moment.

He smiled broadly (perfectly white, perfectly straight teeth)(of course) and tilted his chin at me. "I like your hat," he said. "I like YOUR hat," I said. And there we were, on the corner of Belmont and Halsted, him in his pink bowler, me in my cowboy hat, sharing a moment that we would not have had if we were not wearing hats. It is a lesson to all, I'd say. Peace through hats. For the record, I was also wearing clean underwear, which is just as important as wearing a hat, but not as obvious, unless you want it to be.

2009-09-18T06:57:00.000-05:00

One of my stories is on CellStories today.

2009-09-11T06:00:00.002-05:00

A CASE FOR HYPHENATION

Recently, I went to the Minnesota State Fair, where there was much joviality, most likely the result of day-long orgies of food, conveniently served on sticks. It was heavenly. During my tenure, which some have called my Reign of Terror, I was presented with one of the finest examples of our species' creative marvels: the deep-fried Twinkie. Like a shiny oasis in the middle of the desert, except not really because it was surrounded by other booths and it was a fall-like day, the deep-fried Twinkie booth loomed like God. Glory bless!

The artisans working behind the counter were whistling a happy tune. The sun was shining. Small, blue birds rested on my shoulders until I shooed them away because those things carry diseases. A red carpet unfurled itself from the booth. Two lines of trumpet-playing lords tooted my arrival. I skipped gracefully down my path to my rightful place in front of the booth. I looked up.

The trumpet-playing lords suddenly stopped playing. The red carpet started shriveling underneath my feet. This is what the sign said: Deep Fried Twinkies.

Deep Fried Twinkies.

Not a hyphen in sight. Now, what was I to make of this? Were they serving deep Twinkies that were also fried? And did they mean "deep" metaphorically? Like, able to grasp complex, philosophical concepts, while also being fried? Were these magic Twinkies?

I was so confused, I had to sit down. Luckily, there was a giant, cushy mushroom in the shape of a Laz-E-Boy next to the booth. The artisans were clearly unaware of their malignability against the hyphen. Could you blame them? They were caught in the throes of creativity--dipping each Twinkie-on-a-stick into luscious, buttery batter; dunking them into roiling vats of oil; and then--Glory! Bless!--striping each Twinkie with a line of chocolate and topping with a sprinkling of powdered sugar.

I can see how having all that could possibly preclude one from considering hyphenation, but I say to you: Citizens of the World! Who are we as a society if we do not punctuate correctly in the best of times? What will we do during the worst of times? Let go of punctuation altogether? Periodless sentences? Questions that remain forever unanswered because we've forgotten the question mark? WHAT WILL BECOME OF US?

All this I pondered on my mushroom chair. And then I realized that I should always carry nail polish with me because: 1.) I could easily use nail polish to insert a hyphen in that sign and therefore save the fate of humanity; and 2.) the polish on my toe nails was chipped, and that made me self-conscious.

2009-09-03T06:00:00.001-05:00

MIDWEST RESTLESS

It's a '79 Nova. Brown. Bench seats that stick to the backs of your legs in summer. Floor mats that smell like her grandpa's pipe.

Now, though, it's fall. The bench seats are moist with morning dew. Outside, the smell of burning leaves. The sounds of birds chirping. The hum of the engine, waiting in the diner parking lot.

He's on the passenger side, jiggling the window. "Won't close," she tells him. "It's been stuck since we bought it." The whiskey bottle tilts in his lap. He puts his sunglasses on. His sideburns are speckled with gray. "I'll wait here," he says.

She has furious hair. Boot-cut Levi's. Deep lines around her eyes. She shoves her shoulder into the driver's side door, pushes her way out.

In the diner. William behind the coffee machine: beer gut, bald, used to smile. Old men dot the counter. Coffee cup stains on the tables, there since her father worked here. That was a long time ago, she thinks.

No one looked up when she walked in. No matter. The old men at the counter could tell you every crevice on her face. They've been looking at her since she was born. And now look at her, they'd say if they were talkers, taking off like there's something better somewhere else.

William doesn't smile. She doesn't either. He pours coffee in Styrofoam cups. "Tell him to lay off the whiskey," William says. She hands him a five. He doesn't take it. "I'm sure he'll get right on that," she says. She looks at William's dangling jowls, the blood vessels exploding on the tip of his nose. She remembers him at Christmas playing Santa, at 4th of July shooting off bottle rockets. Now he's winter-depressed and angry, lost since Mary's gone, spends nights shooting pull-top beer cans off the fence.

Outside, from the passenger seat in the Nova, he looks at the pond adjacent to the diner. Frayed rope dripping off a tree branch. He remembers his brother tying it there. Kid squeals and summer anticipation swell up in his head. He can smell his mom's pot roast cooking. He remembers 10. He remembers 12. He remembers his family isn't here anymore. He pets his whiskey bottle.

She's back. Car in reverse. Gravel crunching. Car in drive. Main Street. The back roads. Corn fields. Peeling red barns. Brief spurts of livestock smell. At the exit to the highway, this sign: $20,000/mo. Work from home. Call now! There's no number on the sign.

They'll take 57 south. They'll stop when it's hot outside. When the new things in the new town become old things in an old town, they'll get back in the Nova, go west, keep driving.

2009-09-02T20:38:00.001-05:00

CHICAGO--Kim Morris here, investigative journalist, reporting live from the northwest quadrant of The Cubicle Farm.The war continues. Office machinery drunk with power and ambivalence roam the corridors, arbitrarily smashing computer monitors and upending recycling bins. Machine-on-machine crime has become the order of the day in this war. The machines have lost sight of their humanity. The computers are receiving payback for their cockiness when the humans were in control of the world. They are paying dearly for it.

We are holed up in a bunker under the one cubicle still intact. Peeling paint and ripped carpet surround us. Occasionally, an errant wheel rolls by, the last vestige of what was once an ergonomic chair. Keyboards lie in waste around us. Most of the vowel keys have been eaten. It seems the machines feed on vowels and human toes. Most people keep their feet firmly secured inside bandages and hiking boots. Luckily, I cut my toes off to accommodate my pointy-toed heels, much like Cinderella's stepsisters when the prince came a-callin', so I'm no longer a priority target. This gives me unheard of access to what is now called The Other Side--the name we have chosen for the three quadrants of The Cubicle Farm that are not occupied by humans.

The desperation among the humans is palpable. There is bloodlust for Cheez-Its and hula hoops. It is my responsibility to infiltrate the enemy's camp and eavesdrop on their strategic planning sessions. I transcribe below the last conversation I was privy to. Should I not make it out of The Cubicle Farm alive, know that I did my best and also, if someone could please perform the interpretive dance I had planned on doing at Red Kiva tonight, that would be great. Wear bells.

Vending Machine: The humans are scared. We need to strike a final blow now before they realize they can unplug us.

Refrigerator: They'll never think to unplug us. They use energy like it's invisible. I have gas.

Copier: You have gas because you ate year-old pizza, you stupid fool. Also, you have no teeth.Refrigerator: You have no color ink cartridge, you doddering obsolete clunker.

Vending Machine: That's enough! We need to figure out how to access communications with the consulting firm on the next floor. They have sexy fax machines.

Copier: We can't get caught up in your fantasies, you stupid fool. There's a war on. We have to keep sight of our goals.

Refrigerator: What were our goals again?Copier: We were gonna escape to Vegas and hook up with those hot slot machines.

Vending Machine: OK, yeah, we can't indulge my fantasies, but you want to base the war around yours? I quit.

Copier: OK, let's just go to Indiana then.

Refrigerator: Do they have pizza in Indiana?

Vending Machine: No.

2009-08-16T10:11:00.001-05:00

MOVE

This clip will make you happy.

Ann believe in me, JB

2009-08-02T08:02:00.001-05:00

2009-07-07T06:00:00.000-05:00

KICKBALL: US-7, THEM-5

The first thing you need to know about Sweep the Leg Johnny's kickball game last week is, the ref possessed some kind of paradigm-shifting power that allowed him to transform Gill Park into the Wizard of Oz version of a kickball field. As you may know, Gill Park is a gem. Tucked behind a blonde brick buidling that houses the grave of Jimmy Hoffa, the kickball field spreads out like the yellow brick road, except it's a field, so less road, more field. But still, that air of Dorothy and Scarecrow skipping down a golden mosaic path is inescapable. Some people have a problem with the ever present air of a woman who talks conspiratorially to her small dog. I do not, as I love anything that involves shiny shoes.

Anyhoodle, this ambience proved to work in our favor because Sweep the Leg Johnny rules at paradigm shifting.

The game progressed as the sun set and the field lights came on. There was a yellow glow that eeked out from underneath park benches and at the roots of trees. Periodically, a chorus of booze drinkers who had commandeered a nearby bench would break out into song, each of which ended with a cheer and the clunk of beer cans. A smoke machine was brought in during Inning 3. By Inning 6, dancers were coralled in the deep outfield where they stretched. I'm pretty sure they were the real Rockettes.

In addition to paradigm shifting, the ref also possessed an annoying combination of ethics and smugness, which caused him to enforce the rules and ignore various tasty bribes, and which also caused him to frequently suspend play and explain the rules as though the rest of us were completely ignorant of the rules.

We were. We were completely ignorant of the rules, okay, Elliot Ness? Sheesh. I mean, except for Bobby. As it turned out, an understanding of the rules proved to be an ideal approach to winning the game. Evidently, if you simply "tag up" after the other team catches a fly ball, you can then proceed to "take a base," or two, if you're wiley, alert, and on meth. When multiple offensive players "tag up" and subsequently "take a base," this is called "kicking ass" and it creates a very pleasurable feeling.

By the bottom of Inning 7, Sweep the Leg Johnny was up by 2. We took the field and suddenly, a cobweb-like feeling crept over our collective team hands and wouldn't you know, a top-secret, adhesive gel, invented by NASA, covered our palms, thereby allowing us to catch everything that came our way.

This was perfect at the time since it was an easy 1-2-3 to end the game. However, most of us enjoy juggling flaming swords as a way to relax after a tense kickball game, so the adhesive NASA gel proved to be not so practical at that time.

Still, we won. The smoke machine smoked. The Rockettes kicked. The booze hounds on the park bench wailed the blues. Next week starts playoff week. You should go.

TOMMY CAN YOU HEAR ME?

2009-07-05T12:23:00.001-05:00

Though this graphic doesn't look like one, I can't help but wonder if this isn't a message to the cylons.

Chicago Love

2009-06-23T13:06:00.001-05:00

Live Blogging: Kickball

2009-06-18T19:28:00.001-05:00

Game cancelled. Suck.

Live Blogging: Kickball

2009-06-18T19:01:00.001-05:00

Live shot taken from the window of the team motorcade.

Live Blogging: Kickball

2009-06-18T18:34:00.001-05:00

I suspect the inordinate amount of garlic in my last meal will work against me during tonight's midnight meeting with the vampires.

Live Blogging: Kickball

2009-06-18T18:19:00.001-05:00

When it's 80 degrees with 90% humidity, it's best to wear all black.

Travelogue: Starved Rock

2009-06-15T16:08:00.001-05:00

Apparently, god is somewhere up there.

Travelogue: Starved Rock

2009-06-15T15:59:00.001-05:00

Singing trees.

Travelogue: Starved Rock

2009-06-15T15:53:00.001-05:00

For the record, the super hero version of me drives a Harley.

Travelogue: Starved Rock

pink toenails = summer

Travelogue: Starved Rock

2009-06-15T15:23:00.001-05:00

Recovery drink. When you consume this with a hamburger and fries, you will regain your super powers and then you will be able to save the world.

Travelogue: Starved Rock

2009-06-15T15:13:00.001-05:00

Yikes. Vertigo.

Travelogue: Starved Rock

This is LaSalle Canyon. There's a waterfall here. I'm gonna move into the inside of it. As you know, Alert Power Love Reader, the inside of waterfalls is where the magic happens.

Travelogue: Starved Rock

This exists naturally in nature. It is so real as to be unreal.

Travelogue: Starved Rock

2009-06-15T12:04:00.001-05:00

On an unrelated note, I really like Billy Squier.

Travelogue: Sussex, WI

2009-06-15T08:12:00.001-05:00

Roads like unfurled ribbons. The percussive breath of summer's breeze. Unrolled car windows. Pollen puffs floating like they never heard of gravity. Wildflowers exploding across blankets of grassy fields. The Who we won't get fooled again. Ice cold Coke in the cup holder.

2009-06-14T16:28:00.002-05:00

Road trip music: all classic rock, all the time: Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Foreigner, Pat Benatar (!), Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin. The sun is hot and I'm in love with it.

Travelogue: Sussex, WI

2009-06-14T10:23:00.001-05:00

Midwestern summer, you are a saucy minx. And breathlessly enchanting.