Confession:

There was this one tab open for a guy tonight. And he usually got the drinks for his table. But then his friends started picking them up and even ordering under his name. "Put this on Phill."

"Who?"

"Phil, he's...darn where did he go."

"I kind of need a name..." I looked over to all the blonde hair at the table where he pointed. "Wait, do you mean the only other white guy here beside you? Yeah, you're fine."

Recall, if you will, when I got hired at the bar and they weren't sure I could handle "the biggest ghetto night you've ever seen."

It's Two Dollar Tuesdays. Two-dollar appetizers. Tonight J. Fox from Def Jam and New Edition from Badboy were supposed to perform. That should impress you if you are as cool as I think I am. My bar is essentially the bar from Ludacris videos. Fancy drinks, handshakes, mixtapes.

Last week on tuesday we had to close it down because there was too much weed-smoking and far too much dice rolling. This week some guy, in search of wings after the kitchen closed, tried to get them from a waitress's chest. Security throws people out for spilling drinks. But they didn't do anything. There's certain people they never touch (read: gang hot-shots).

They compromised by throwin just the one guy out. And when he went to get his friend, the man who did end up getting some wings, he pretended not to know him so that his night could continue. Then the fisticuffs began. First in the bar, then on the street. The offending gentleman walked home alone with a bruises that made him look like the elephant man. And he must have to retire a heretofore perfectly fine Rocawear shirt.

Before everyone even got out the door, security began fighting with the managers. "Look, mutherfucker, you can't tell me what I should have done or shouldn't have done when you don't have to go home to it."

The elders in the club started to sound like the third act of a Wayans brothers movie. "Mmm hmm, our own worst enemy. Did the white dude start shit? No. We too busy fighting ourselves."

But what matters most is that I worked from 10 this morning til 2 AM and I made the money that will make my first official Chicago-wages rent payment. Brendan wins.

Labels: Chicago

Walking out of the Fahrenheit 9/11 I got a sensation somewhere between liberal-guilt and anger that reminded me that I'm really not doing shit for anyone right now. There was a time when I worked for a Human right's group in Chinatown, Manhatten. For several months I corresponded with Mumia's wife. We even called eachother on 9/11 just to check in.

But then again, Michael Moore is doing more than I ever could, and this country's still going to hell.

If you don't worship Michael Moore on some minor scale, then atleast worship me and Ben. When we were in high school and in trouble, he wrote about us on his website and then later for the underground newspaper we ran. I said the previous statement just to make myself sound cool. This next part is just to be an asshole:

from:MMFlint@aol.com
To:sullivanb
Subject:
RE: ABOUT SPEAKING AT KENYON COLLEGE NEXT SPRING
Urgent New
brendan - would love to come, just dont know schedule yet...
hey can i write about your getting kicked off school paper for my next book? send details!!
mike

If you own Stupid White Men he interviewed me for the section on student media (p. 117). And it ended up being a bunch of unattributed advice on how to gain crebility by being funny, how to do a professional job, and basically how not to include drawings of unfavorable teachers with needles in their veins and skulls and crossbones for faces.

The best part about his movies is that people talk. The ill-informed become better informed and then later inform the underinformed when talking to them. I'm not sure if it can turn a hard core conservative into a vague centrist. But if you're a republican living in the Chicago area, I would love to watch that movie with you and hear what you think. I won't even make jokes about the poverty line which you've created and which I live below. I won't mention foodstamps or minimum wage or anything.

But I will be honest in telling you that I'm forwarding my subscription to VIBE Magazine to Florida so that it may be used as proof of address when I go there to vote in November.

Labels: Chicago

Somehow when I went to seeFahrenheit 9/11 for the second time today, fandango.com rang us up for twenty three tickets instead of five. The bigger problem is that Ben entrusted me with his credit card to reserve tickets while he went to pick up a lady at the airport.

It is the policy of the movie theater that they do not give refunds. If I owned a movie theater, I especially wouldn't give refunds to sold out shows. The guy in front of us in line was denied entry.

"I'm sorry, but it's the policy of the theater that we don't give refunds."

I noticed a triangular pendant on his chain. "So you're a Mason."

"Yeah, four years. My whole family are masons. Going way back." This is shocking to me because I've only met white masons before. "You thinking of joining?"

"Well, my whole family is in." (They're definately not.) "But, you know, I want to do it for myself. I don't want it just to be something that I felt like I had to do."

"I hope you make the right decision. Change your whole life. It's helped me out, it's helped my family out." Somehow, smoother than I can relay in text format, we got on the subject of what masons can do for one another and he told me to come back after the movie. They refunded Ben's credit card, thus preventing him from going overdraught $189. That would really piss me off since right now I hold the household overdraught balance of $166.

R.I.P. this section from my novel-project. When I wrote it almost two years ago, I absolutely loved it. I thought I had just become the cleverest motherfucker on the planet. But in the time in between I realized that it's been done. It's been done in a book that was listed for the Pulizer. It's been done by every lazy creative writing major at my school as a way of getting around filling in plot holes.

I'm going to miss it. When I finished it I went to Prague and gave email the whole project to Amanda so that in case I died somewhere...you know what? Nevermind why, just thank god that some kind of Nick Drake shit didn't happen to me, because I really hate that draft.

But she said she beleived in me when she read it and anything that helped that relationship is okay with me. But yes, I'm working a draft right now that shall not fuck with the fourth wall like this.

“I don’t know why you keep calling that girl,” Hampshire said as I cleared the morning’s detritus from the passenger seat.
“Yeah, well, neither do I really.”
“Seriously, man,” he said, as he twisted the gas cap for its three security clicks. “I can think of a hundred better things to do at a gas station.”
Yeah, well no offense, but you’re not exactly Mickey McFascinating these days.
“Huh?”
“I said I don’t know either.”
“Look, you can’t spent the rest of your life whining about that girl.”
“Who’s whining? I just thought I would be nice to talk to someone else for a change, that’s all. And the first person I thought of was Sherry.”
“What?”
“Sherry.”
“Who’s Cherry?”
“Sherry, you know who Sherry is.”
“I’ve never met a ‘Sherry’ before in my life.”
“Don’t put her name in quotes like that. You know exactly who she is. She’s my girlfriend from high school.”
“Oh,” he said slowly, “from way back in high school. What was that? Like, four weeks ago?” He patted his pocket for the keys and then spotted them in the ignition.
“…yeah.”
“And another thing, Sherry?”
“Of course it’s not her real name. It’s her nickname, ‘cause she has red hair.”
“What does that have to do with her, oh…” he trailed off like that. “You’re lying.”
“Am not.”
“Yes, and you’re mixing up two different things,” he said, then laughed. “And I know exactly what you’re trying to do and you already fucked it up. You don’t want to use her real name because you’d rather turn her into some sort of furniture that you can mould and shape to mean something to you. Maybe you’ve made up one person to be an amalgam of people you knew, while at the same time creating this prophylactic—fucking—wall between you and reality so you don’t ever have to deal with anything.”
“That’s not it at all, you make it sound like—”
“Am I even me?”
“What?”
“Am I me. Am I really the guy in all the pictures you took, or am I some sort of simplified, iconic protagonist?”
“No.”
“Bullshit.”
“You’re not. Otherwise, why would I bother talking about Ben? I could just pretend you were him. That would have been so much easier, come to think of it.”
“…Oh…you…Oh I see, you mentioned the whole coach fiasco thing?”
“The free speech thing?”
“Right, whatever. Did you tell the truth, or did you act like Gandhi?”
“The truth.”
“Right, right. Mr. I’m-on-the-side-of-Truth, who can’t even tell the stories right,” he started the car and drove out of the gas station lot. He quieted down for the on ramps, but then something came to him as he switched lanes. “I get it! Oh, you’re such a loser. You do mean Cherry. Cherry, Pony Boy’s girlfriend from that movie. Cherry the cool, rich, popular girl. You’re so fucking dramatic sometimes it makes me sick.
“So what?”
“So, that’s stupid. You’re eighteen years old, why don’t you grow up and get over it? Jesus, why didn’t you call her ‘Maria?’”
“Well, then she’d be the token ethnic name and I just didn’t…you know…”
“Oh…I guess that’s true. Did you already bring up the Albanian pizza place?”
“Maybe, I’m getting to that…”
He scratched his cheekbone and thought into the odometer. “How about this? You open a new chapter an you hang up the phone only to turn around and find a girl in the phonebooth with you. You say, ‘I just tried to call you.’ She says, ‘I thought I’d find you here.’ You look at each other, then you glance back and the phone is gone and the door handle won’t work. You feel trapped and she smiles at you again. Right? And then—ready? here’s the cool part—she leans in toward you and puts her arms around your shoulder, that tips the phone booth over, but it doesn’t land on the ground, it falls into your own grave. Then you look up to find there’s no one in there but you.”
“Look—”
“No wait, here’s the best part. When you look through the glass you see yourself standing above you with a shovelful of dirt. And the instant it covers over your face you start a new paragraph with the sentence, ‘And then I woke up.’ The go mail it to your eight grade English teacher and see if you don’t get a fucking gold star mailed back to you. Dork.”
“Would you just—”
“Oh right, let me guess. That would have helped because you failed English in eighth grade and they were gonna make you stay back? Wow, check me out, I’m a casualty of the American school system. Pity me.” He made a face into the windshield and continued to shout at the car in front of us. “And another thing: Cherry? I could have come up with something better than Cherry.”
“I’m sorry, next time I’ll consult you.
“Honestly, it’s just so sexual. What was your next choice? ‘Eve?’”
“Ok, you’ve made your point.”
“Fine.” Having that resolved he looked around. “Where were we?”
“Colorado. Back at a gas station when this started. So I guess we could just pick up anywhere now. Your last line was something about change.”
“Oh, well, I do have the change from the gas station.” I took the money from his hand and began the process of checking whether we had locked the glove box last time, turning the key one way, checking to see if that unlocked it, and then reversing direction. “Wow, we really haven’t spent as much on gas as we planned.”
“Yeah, remember when we worked it out to be like $800 each? We were way off.”
He produced an oversized bottle of soda and handed it to me after he took a sip. “I got the big one so we could share.”
“You mean so you could justify buying drinks with the trip fund—”
“MARIA!” he broke into song. “Maria! Maria! I just made up a girl named Ma-RHEEEEA-YAHH!”
“And you wonder why I spend so much time at payphones desprately trying to talk to someone else.”
“Bullshit, it’s the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday. You know she wouldn’t be home. Were you hoping to chat with her mommy?”
“No, look, I don’t even know.”
“Whatever.”
I reclined the seat. With a crunch of corn chip bags and a good amount of force I got the junk in the backseat to compress a bit so I could lay down and read. After a few miles Hampshire settled on a radio station and I nestled into the pages of a book about a rock band on an Indian Reservation.
Half an hour later I started to lose track of which character said what and I decided that a nap was in order.
“I’m tired,” I yawned. “You alright to drive for a while?”
“I was just going to ask you the same question,” he said.
“Oh, well, go ahead, I’ll be alright for a couple of hours.”
“Alright, wake me up when we get close to Colorado Springs. I really wanna see Pike’s Peak on the horizon.”
“No problem,” I said. “Pull over and we can switch.”
“Great,” he said with that stupid grin on his face. By now you know the one.
“What? What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.”
“Whatever. It’s gonna be a few before I can stop.”
“No problem, ‘Ponyboy.’”

In response to the last post I ended up doing nothing, which in itself is something.

Today is my first day-off in 19 days.

Tell me what should I do with myself keeping in mind that:

1) I live near the beach.
2) There's almost nothing I can't do in Chicago.
3) I have both shitloads of money and no desire to spend it.

Labels: Chicago

Every night this week I've had pad thai (veggie, no egg) for dinner. And I've yet to leave my neighborhood or go to the same place twice.

Lately I've come to realize that everyone I know has been mugged and I'm statistically on my way. Today at work I freestyled an entire mugging story to a woman who was relating a story to me about getting her jewlery stolen.

"See, when I got mugged--"

"You got mugged too?"

"Yeah, but I said, Look, you can have my wallet and all my cash. I'll even give you my cellphone. But there's a notebook in my bag and some edits that I can't write again, both of which are worthless to you and I need them."

"And they let you get away with that? Was this at gunpoint? See, cause I was robbed and they hit me in the face with a pistol and stole the charm bracelet that my gramma gave me a week before she died. When I came to I found my boyfriend on the lawn in his underwear. They stole his Adidas tear-away pants."

Cut to me getting off at the wrong bus stop and therefore walking to the wrong liquor store. We live on the line between former-ghetto and ghetto-ghetto. The two liquor stores are owned by the same family. One has bullet-proof glass, which is where I was.

On the way out a gentleman with receeding gum lines started talking to me. People in Chicago, at least in the summer, speak to one another more than they do in New York, especially if it may garner them any spare change or a cigarette. He's about fifty:

"Yo, welcome to the neighborhood, man. You walking home?"

"Yeah...I mean no, I'm, uh..." I have most of my shift pay on me, which is intended to buy me turntables.

"Brah, you got a square for me?" (square=cigarette in Chicago)

"Yeah." Somehow smoke-inhalers' solidarity wins me friends.

"You got any money on you?" I look down the street and it just so happens that when I imagined the story from part one (above) it happened in a place like this. Dark, semi-residential, semi-abandoned. He looks me up and down and looks in my man purse which contains little more than a sushi menu and flashcards with names of fish scrawled in Sharpie.

A guy I don't know walks up the street towards us. "Yo, man, how you been? Haven't seen you in a while." We do this alot in our house. It's an improv thing which we call "Yeah, and..." He starts walking me away from the man whose drug habits have taken money owed from his gumline. "Got an empty crib this weekend. Hopin' to get some shorties up in here tonight, boy. You heard about my party right?"

"Yeah, I got some beer for it and all. You headed over there right now?"

"Yo, yo, hey man," the crackhead interjects. "You know my son?" He points to the my savior in the cornbraids. The great part here is that he thinks that he's doing to me what we're doing to him. He's in the middle of pretending that he knows the man who's pretending to know me.

"Whatever grampa," Savior says. "Yo, Hank" that's me "walk me to the store, man." Grampa follows us in and we eventually lose him. Cornbraids walks me out. "Fuckin' crackhead."

"Thanks for running interference."

"No doubt," he says. I'm also aware of the fact that if I were a criminal--and I'd be a really great criminal--I would find other people's victims and turn them into my own with the same technique. "Yo, lemme get a square?" We speak for a moment and I end up giving him one of the beers I've just purchased from a store I'm never going to on purpose again.

Then when I got home tonight Ben's car had been broken into and his iPod and wallet stolen.

Labels: Chicago

Also from yesterday's New York Times, in an article about Chicago, which refers to our neighborhood as "hip Wicker Park." It refers to a large aerial photo of the city on the wall in a boutique.

"So many people walk in here and ask, `Oh, is that New York?' " said Lance Lawson, who opened Jake in this gentrifying neighborhood. "I tell them, `No, it's your city,' " Mr. Lawson said.

That all-too-familiar query, he knows, carries with it a whiff of the self-doubt that has plagued Chicagoans for generations. Never mind the city's rich cultural climate that has spawned David Mamet, pop sensations like the Smashing Pumpkins and Liz Phair, and high-profile fashion designers like Cynthia Rowley, a local girl who moved to Manhattan and made good. The feeling persists that Chicago has a way to go before it overcomes its image as a fashion backwater, its citizenry swaddled in ugly track suits and lumpy Fair Isle sweaters.

"So many people outside Chicago still think we're all eating deep-dish pizza and wearing sweat pants," Mr. Lawson said

If it weren't for sweatpants and deepdish pizza, my roomates would not have the energy or decency to ever leave the house.

Labels: Chicago

One thing I love about my work schedule and lifestyle is that I have no weekends. Tomorrow I have the afternoon and night off and I don't have to work until four on thursday. Instant Friday. Remember in school how every month or so you had a half day or a surprise Jewish holiday? That's basically my life every week.

From today's New York Times:

Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman declared an end to the "paper era" of the food stamp program on Tuesday at a conference of state officials here.

"This month the food stamp program arrived in the 21st century," Ms. Veneman said. "States are destroying the paper coupons, and we don't anticipate that we'll ever have to print them again."

Food stamp recipients generally like debit cards because they avoid the stigma that can be associated with the use of paper coupons. Grocers like the new technology because they are paid faster, often within 48 hours; cashiers do not have to handle vouchers; and there are no coupons to sort, count and bundle

1)I would just like to use my priveleged position to mention that instead of foodstamps, which apparently waste paper, I've received eleven mailings from the foodstamps office updating me on the balence of the electriconic account, warning me of future changes, and reminding me to update the office in the event of a change in shelter location. And when I buy food, I get a receipt, followed by a printout of my account balence.

2) They wanna change the name from Food Stamps to something more futuristic sounding. Please. This is America. Students get a printout every semester and call it a "Report Card" and they haven't printed them on cards since I was in elementary school. We get paychecks Direct Deposite and never see the check. We put numbers in a spread sheet and call it "Doing the books." Movietickets.com gives you a "ticket stub." We need to believe that somewhere, something officially exists, even if we don't see it. There's better examples, but I can't think of any of them...

Have you been reading this site long enough to remember two years ago when I got a story accepted for an anthology? It's finally going to come out. They sent the proof to my parents house today.

Go ahead and look at it online at Amazon. I'd like to ask you to buy twenty or thirty copies, but I've already gotten paid and there's no chance of more money.

Nothing can topple that house-of-cards of home security like forgetting your keys and breaking into your own house.

Since I stopped driving a month ago, I've gotten all to used to the idea that if I can hear music it's only for me, through my headphones.

Pulled up moments ago in Ben's car, put it in park, and a workman knocked on my window.

"What?" I said.

He mouthed something, so I turned down the music.

"What?" I repeated.

"Look, we all love the B-52's, but if you park there I can't get my truck out."

Soon I'll be done domesticating myself and my location. I am doing my best to prevent my room from appearing as a dormitory.

If Chuck Palahniuk had never written Fight Club, then I would have alot to say about my first-ever IKEA trip.

Today was my 16-hour shift at the bar. Aside from the hours where I didn't have anything to do, I had a three minute break wherein I walked next door, got sushi, and mailed a letter. If my life were the big-ass fiction project I am editting--and which I editted today during downtime--I would make this the same sushi restaurant where I hold my other job. But it's not. That one is so much closer to my house. I don't even have to take the train.

My feet hurt because my shoes are worthless as anything other than moccassins. But on the way home my right foot didn't hurt so much after I tucked $270 dollars into the sole. (I said that specifically to be a dick).

When I start working fulltime sushi, it's possible that I will make that in a single friday over a period of four hours. Realistically I could live very well even if I only made like $80 four nights a week at a restaurant. And the worst part is that I'll probably still work 66 hour weeks for no other reason than that my father really likes telling people that I work that much.

Happy Bloomsday.

My goal for the rest of the week is to get five-and-a-half hours of sleep every night. Every morning this week I've woken up hating life, and I think it's not so much what I do/drink during the day, but how long I spend in bed. On saturday night when I got home at 7:00, I was up by 10:30, last night I went to bed around 4:00 and could not fathom why the alarm was going off until I put on my glasses and found out it's 8:30.

My roommates will not be up for another three to five hours, which is great. As I was saying to Ben last night, a three, If you wanted to break into our house, you'd have to do it at 7:00 AM, because that's the only time you won't find someone in the living room.

There's no real reason for me to post our routine and my personal schedule (coming soon) like this, except for the benefit of my forty-year-old-self. This edition of myself will in all probability have only one job (waiter) and will not look forward to the fifteenth when the new food stamps come out, and probably drives a convertible will lots of blankets in the back since he must live in an exotic location where he gets laid all the time.

When stars of stage and screen fly in to his restaurant for his superior service and he walks out every night (early) with enough money to buy a new laptop, I want him to read this when he boots it up.

Weekly Schedule
Sun: Sushi Training 4:00-11:15 (7.25 hrs)
Mon: Bar Closing 4:30-2:30 (10 hrs)
Tues: Bar Openning 10:30-4:00
Sushi Training 4:15-10 (11.75 hrs)
Wed: Bar Open to Close 10:30AM-2:30 AM (16 hrs)
Thur: Morning off! (this week, for example, I'm going to IKEA)
Closing Sushi 6 PM-12 AM (6 hrs)
Fri: Bar Open-Afterwork crowd 10:30-8:00 PM (9.5 hrs)
Sat Whole day off!
So I'm working my third job, handing out chapstick for American Express (6 hrs).

Grand Total: 66 hrs.

I'm saving for something. Not like so I can be and adult and have savings and afford emergency surgery or a golden retriever. I'm going to buy a laptop soon and either a plane ticket to Florida or a convertible to drive me to Florida. I'm currently toying with the idea of not working this fall so that I can get some work done.

The other night Brad and I saw Hella play at a bar nearby and the bartender was the kind of smoking-hot indie-rock-princess that could put herself through medical school just by handing cheap beer to skinny guys in tight pants.

"She's exactly the kind of bartender I'd like to split tips with," I told him. Now that I am no longer academically reminded of my theoretical white/white-male privelege, I often forget about it. When I started at the Sushi restaurant, I was really bummed out that the cute girls were going to get all the good tips. There are nights at the bar where I work alone and it's hard to make money, but when there's a girl to split tips with I'm rolling in it. Because everything you hear about men, as a group, is pretty much true.

Even speaking heterosexually--and I can't make any excuses for this, I'm just going to gender my wages: women don't tip very well. Everytime it happens, I think back to my Women's and Gender Studies (excuse me, that's my Degree in Women's and Gender Studies) and feel bad for cringing when a table of four housewivish-types show up. It was never worse than in Ohio when I would wait on garden clubs: women who have never held jobs.

The best I can come up with is that since women still make seventy-three cents for every dollar a man makes, then every woman I serve--who is not or has not been in the business: waitresses tip like strip-club patrons--is trying to give me a better perspective.

Anyway, I realized that no amount of idolatry could ever make me go talk to her after working in a bar. Earlier that day some guy walked up to one of the cocktail waitresses and I had to do something I really hate, which is witnessing men who have no game.

Clueless Guy Who In My Opinion has Bad Skin And No Style: Look, my friend and I were sitting over there and, I told him that I couldn't leave without coming to talk to you. You seem like a really sweety girl and I...

I went away from the bar to throw up. But I wished I hadn't, because she shyly laughed him off and pretended to be busy. He wouldn't leave her alone and when she walked away from the bar to deliver a drink, her full-on, both-hands, both-cheeks palmed her ass.

And, well, I don't know if we'ver ever met before, but here's how I handle conflict. And it's my job as the male on duty to throw these guys out. Afterwards I told her she handled herself well. "No big deal," she said. "Something happens more or less every night. And it only gets worse through the summer." I then wondered if my male-privlege would keep me in the industry for another twenty years--as planned--and if this would be too tiresome for a woman in my position.

Then the same fucking thing happened the next night at my Sushi restaurant.

Walking home tonight from some strange ass neighborhood in Chicago I got the feeling of having done this before. Check the timestamp. I just walked in the door from my Saturday night. Long walk from who-knows-where. Hanging out with people who didn't know me, but felt like they should talk to me enough that conversation was noncompulsary. Oh, right, it's like that that time I was in Paris. I expect that to be the last time I compare Chicago to Paris.

Brad and I went to a party in Pilsen tonight, which involved round-trips in a cab ($13) and the promise that--once we stopped referring to Chicago as the place we had just moved and rather the place were we live--we would never do this again. We met up with some ex-Kenyonite later and she took us to a bar on the other side of town with her friends. We left while the house band was doing a cover of "Little Sister" an Elvis song which I've always entertained. And we headed home. I called Ben to see if he was up and interested in picking me up twenty or so blocks from home.

After walking down the same street for an hour--at this point people are starting to commute and I've been awake so long after getting hammered that I'm conscious of my body growing hungover--Ben calls saying he went up and down the street, drove past any landmarks and still didn't find us and was going to bed. The shit part is that Ben has already done all of the work that would make him our hero for the next week. A favor that would garner him any small thing--bus fare, a burrito, a drink in a bar--that he could want. And we would be grateful and worship him. It's like this: My high-paying job as bartender is about seven-times easier than working in the coffeeshop because still all I'm doing is turning arround and puting together three ingredients at a time, but the customers tip so much more for alcohol.

But since Ben went to bed, I have this strange feeling that I know that he should be entitled to any small thing he should want--since he did exactly the same legwork--but since I received nothing for his labors I am less inclined.

I got off the bus on my street. It was the first bus that came since we left. It was the bus we would have waited for even if Ben didn't say he would pick us up. He calls while I'm moments away from our door to tell me that he felt bad, got in the car, and is right where we last said we were. Then I told him about the bus and the almost home part.

Which means that he put in the labor for two really amazing favors, twice he left home at five in the morning to pick me up. But still I had to walk and bus forever. I need to write Dear Abbey about this.

Labels: Chicago

Somehow, although I own very little, I lost my battery charger and there I haven't taken many pictures of Chicago, a city I love and a city that I love to look at. Maybe Ben will post more pictures from his new camera.

Labels: Chicago

Of all my bad jobs I think this is the crappiest. I'm at the Chicago Blues Festival supposedly working for American Express. My task is to get people who already have the card to sign up for a free extra something or other. It's bullshit. 1) because this is a blues festival, everyone has bad credit. 2) because I have to wear a moronic hawaiian print shit.

However, they do have cellular laptops so we can sign people up.

The job takes forever, so I was hiding behind a tent idly enjoying a cigarette, wondering if it was okay to smoke so close to a food tent. Some asshole guy in Diesel jeans comes right up to me with a cell phone pressed to his ear and gets indignant as hell: "Look, you can't smoke."

"Okay," I stub it out. "No problem. I mean, I don't need to..."

"Where are you flyers? If you're gonna work you're going to have to work." Okay, okay, back off assface. Jesus. I walk around handing out more chapsticks, wondering why this guy gives a shit about what I do.

Moments later I get a call on my cell phone from my manwhore agent. "Look, Brendan, I understand if you need to have a cigarette."

"What? I don't need one at all, I was just bored and...how did you hear about that?"

"And I really wish you wouldn't speak like that to the CEO." So while I was lamenting the loss of half a cigarette, I was in effect copping an attitude to the man signing my checks. Of course I didn't mean to, and of course he's a five foot four asshole with two hundred dollar blue jeans, so insubordination is not okay with him.

I try and look busy and hand out chapsticks. It's my job, apparently. He comes runs up to me as I walk down the street--and since he's a napoleon character, everything is running to him--and puts on a management tone: "I wanna be able to see you at all times, stay right in front of the booth for the rest of the shift." And since I'm getting to write about this on a company computer and since I'm getting $160 for less than seven hours of work on my day off: that's fine with me.

Labels: Chicago

I really, really hate any lame olde white guy who knows anything about sushi.

1) And here's how it goes

"Can you make a 'Pink Lady?' Do you know what that is?" No, I don't, but what if she doesn't know either?

"Pink lady? Do you mean a 'Pink Elephant?'" I think I just made that name up. "What's in it?"

"I'm not sure. A friend told me to order it. What's in a pink elephant?"

"Stoli Raspberry, grenadine, and seven-up."

"Yeah, that might be it. That sounds good. I'll have that."

2) Tonight the great swindle continues with my first night at the Sushi Restaurant. I should add that all though I understand sushi and have had it one many occassions, I've only had the vegetarian kinds. Plus they have a Sake list as long as their wine list. Let the pretending begin.

3) Making conversation with a table at the bar yesterday:

"Hey so you like my new shirt?" Yes, I talk to everyone the same. We're talking about the aforementioned shirt.

She says point blank: "It's not very original. Stripes. I mean, everyone's doing stripes now. But you know... it's alright and all..."

4) I realized yesterday that I will probably never change Chicago, but there's no way to avoid Chicago changing me. I don't know exactly what happened to me last summer in Delaware, but I know I changed somehow. It may be in the way I talk. Maybe I'll get an accent (doubtful), maybe my manners/mannerisms will change. Maybe I'll developed a catch phrase ("Alright, so that was two Stoli Martinis: comin' back 'atcha right away.")

5) Yesterday we were all up at 5 AM and decided to go out and find the first open bakery. Then we went to the beach at 7:30 AM on a Monday just because we could.

6) If I do have a catchphrase, it would be "that's what I went to college for." For instance, the woman at the bakery was some kind of student in African & African-American Diaspora (Ben: "I hate people who do African-American studies.") She was, in essence, everything The Chapelle Show thinks an African-American History student should be. I of course began asking her what she was reading (it was basics) and then I asked if she had any others like bell hooks, Paul Gilroy or Edward Said.

My roommates later made fun of me for speaking with the lamest girl available at 5:50 in the morning. But that's what I went to college for: to meet people and to tell them what books I've read.

Labels: Chicago

At the firehouse was a work-in-progress of someones. It has rusty nails that betray it's age, but it's covered in both dust and sawdust as if someone forgot to finish refinishing it. The bitch part is that whoever was making it into a toolbox installed a latch to prevent people from stealing their screwdrivers. And I stole the whole cabinet.

1) My keyboard works again. This only means that somewhere I have a $90 come uppance waiting for me.
2) It's not even that I was treated poorly at the store or anything justifiable. I walked around for an hour looking for a way to spend a long overdue gift-return from a gramma sweater of Christmases past. Amanda and I had bought house shit with it long ago, back when we were a plural. Part of me gets irate at malls because I'm surrounded by many people and all I can tell about them is that I hate them. Which is unfair. Of course. But here's what's happened in fashion in the past three years (cue rant):

a) as soon as I left public high school, it became cool to pay alot of money to dress as though you are underpriveleged.
b) this includes faux-vintage t-shirts, jeans with the ass/crotch/thighs worn out, and hats that appear to be provided as the uniform for a company that is too cheap to buy fabric for the entire hat and will instead use plastic mesh.
c) there's a new style emerging that seems to be an extrapolation of common ways my clothing looked wrong when my mother dressed me. There was a Perry Ellis shirt there for $140 which has bleach spattered all over the collar. There was a French Connection jacket that had the seams visible like the factory mistakes at TJ Maxx.

Of course I couldn't steal any of these products because I would never get any wear out of them because I would walk by my reflection in car doors and hate myself.
3) If I read such narcissistic, judgemental crap on someone elses website, I would think they were just as shallow as the people they hate whom they run into while shopping. I encourage you to do the same.
5) Speaking of my come uppance, it needs an appraisal: on the way home from dinner Ben and Dave found an open door in downtown Chicago. It was inside a long abandoned fire house. They explored upstairs, stole two chairs and came home. Ben and I went back half an hour later and came back with four leather brass-tacked dining chairs, a leather recliner, and a cupboard with shelves that is now my underwear and socks holder. A girl they know gave us a couch as well, which means that in our gigantic living room (recall if you will that this apartment is bigger than my parents house) we now have

a) The dining room table that Spragens and Anders found in the woods.
b) A leather chair from a fancy restaurant for everyone in the house.
c) The couch we found in the alley way by the scrapyard.
d) The end table I found in the trash at Kenyon.
e) A stereocabinet and bookshelf that our landlord gave us.
f)The lamp for check-out aisle seven, which we took from the ex Quality Farm & Feed store.
g) An antique radio which we are currently wiring to a pair of trunk speakers which I found at Kenyon. Farsheed has a sauldering gun to it as we speak.
h) A coffee table with a copy of The Onion Ad Nauseum. I meantion this because I would appreciate it is everyone in Chicago, or in the surrounding area, would drop by some day and flip to the title page where the entire staff has left me notes that refer to office jokes we had when I worked there for a week that one time. I just have to mention that from time to time.
i) A couch given to us by a friend of a friend's friend. I only know her as "couch girl." It folds out into a really nice bed. No bars, just a mattress on the floor.

6) Tomorrow I am going to get up early and go to the same street where I took the other shirt and actually pay quite alot for a plain black shirt for my new job. Then I'm bartending until 2 AM. Then I'm openning the bar at 10:30 AM the next morning. Then I'm getting trained at the new restaurant at 4 PM. I'm just writing that down becaus I know that invariably I will get to an age where I steal less and sleep more, and I'm going to wish I could remember these days well enough, and I'm going to wonder if they actually were as great as I remember them.

Labels: Chicago

||Jufsat fso wre'rwe clearw on one thing, karmically speaking, the $90 shiwrt | fstole yefstewrday cost jufsat afsa much as the keyboard |I now havxe to rweplace afsterw fspilling coffee on it moments ago.

Day Two At The Bar

For every moment that I am home, there is little I can do to stop myself from tearing the sheets off of my bed, tossing all of my many dollar bills on there and rolling around in them for ten or fifteen minutes.

1) Actual words spoken to me by a patron in the bar where I work, in which I am of the sole representative of pale people. "Yea, uhmm, look I missed my bus and I'm gonna have to stay here tonight. Can I start a tab using my lawyer's credit card? I'll call him right now and he can give you the numbers. He's legit, he's a lawyer..." I honestly have no idea what the rules are so I must have looked hesitant because she reached far and said: "I mean he's my lawyer...and he's uh... he's a whiteman."

2) Today was supposed to be my training day. I was supposed to come in at lunch and make lunch drinks and learn my way around the bar. As of walking in the store this mornign I had no interest in the job. I wanted to make forty-fifty in cash so I could pay off my local debts and eat and buy train tickets to better jobs. I've never actually bartended before. But I do drink too much, so I've kind of done the research. But they don't know any of that. I had four customers all day and just before I was ready to leave, four more came in and then multiplied as their friends' dropped by. They ended up drinking a shitload of fancy beers. I made my first hundred of the day (just try saying that, it sounds so good) on these two tables. Then the real bartender--a man who has been there for five years--said his stomach hurt and the manager said, "Well, it's fine if you wanna go home. I mean, Brendan's here. He can stay. He knows what to do."

The waitress on duty has been there for five years as well and she kept running up to me with weird derivation of standard drinks. Neither of which I could have made. A Blue Mutherfucker. A Blue Curacao Margarita. For the first few I asked her to grab the manager for me, "Yeah, I'll make those right now. Oh, I just remembered I have to tell Lou something."

"What do you need?"

"I wanted to know what the house recipe for a blue, uh, Margarita actually is." Look, I'm sorry that I'm in the middle of a very simple opperation that you've seen done every day for five years.

"It's Curacoa instead of Triple Sec." Great so no not only is there an ingredient I didn't know about (triple sec) but now it's not even in the drink. I just make shit up for a while and pick up on the fact that Margaritas have sour mix in them ("Right, I know they do, it's hard to taste over the tequila"). I did make an assload of Cosmopolitans, a drink I know how to make because in the interviewer they described the next bartender up as "Confident and pretty good, we only have to help him out now and then, like when he doesn't know what goes in a cosmopolitan."

I feel like this is the proper format through which I can freely speak of how many wads and wads of money were in my pocket when I walked out of my job tonight. I worked from 10:30 AM until 1 AM and made almost as much as I get in foodstamps for two months. Now I can start paying Ben back.

When I was fifteen and working on a farm down the street from my house, I wrote this down in a little notebook I kept in my pocket:

There are two kinds of jobs in the world. The ones where you have to shower before and the ones you have to shower after. If you find one that requires neither, stick with it.

I can't decide which category to put Daytime Bartender. Does anyone care if I have clean skin? No. Is the place going to be so disgusting that I'll have to shower as soon as I get home? No. So according to myself seven years ago, I should keep this job.

Three More Things
1) This happened at Home Depot. Every place has to have a place they can agree on hating. Unfortunately that was my hometown back in CT. Luckily there's a yuppie shithole in Chicago called Lincoln Park where every attrocity of convenience occurs. It's where the home depot is, it's where the best buy and the circuit city are next to eachother and it's where I went today when I:
2) went grocery shopping at Whole Foods on food stamps. As I may have mentioned, foodstamps doesn't pay for prepared foods, cleaning products, or hygeine materials. So don't tell my roommates that I've been showering with their dishsoap. So in order to eat a delicious Jamaican Seitan sandwhich with avocado, I had to order it, smile, and then eat it like a barbarian while browsing the dried beans. But Uncle Sam bought me some seriously great food. I'm currently his favorite nephew.
3) Had my first alumni-ish night. I met up with a good friend of mine who graduate the year before. We both just got jobs so we had a real discussion at his local bar about alumni, work, commuting, and bands. It was nice. And I'd like to thank Ben for lending me ten dollars even though he thinks he only lent me five. Without his help, I would not have had so many great two-dollar PBR's.

Labels: Chicago

So tomorrow morning I have to wake up at eight so that I can get a train to downtown Chicago to start my new job. It's at the bar serves/possibly hates black people. The great part is going to be getting on the train tomorrow with my man-purse and a travel mug; pulling out reams of paper to edit, and getting off at the stock exchange so that I can cut limes and pull pints.

Also, I know damn well that in training I'll maybe make $40. I owe Ben $31 for Beer, pizza (x2), three separate cash advances ($5/ea), and--jesusfuckingchrist--for the night we went to a hookah bar. And pretty much right after work I'm probably going to get two grand in debt on a new laptop.

So to recap:

Ben: made $100+ two nights in a row/is generally rolling in it.
Brendan: is up to $2031 in debt and works the morning shift in a bar.

Labels: Chicago

On the way to my moronic drink-up at the aforementioned bar, I realized that I might be in trouble. I didn't wanna bring a friend because then we could maybe be a spectacle, plus then I couldn't lie. But if I went alone-given the impression I've gotten--I would end up smiling at the wrong girl and getting stabbed. So I went by the noodle restaurant and got Ben on his way out of work.

"So what should my job be?" he says, when we arrive. "I think I wanna have a record label."

"Like one people have heard of or one people think they've heard of?"

"No, I think I'm going to be the talent scout for Subpop." We have an open bartab provided by the latently-racist owner. It's three drinks, but we decide that it's going to be three drinks each. Three nice drinks. I have a Stella, a Corona, and some German shit that comes with a lemon. Ben has a Guiness and a Heineken or two.

Everyone who works there has heard of me and they make it a point to introduce themselves. I'm the new white-guy they're trying to scare off. They really shouldn't have done it tonight. This is industry night for the local DJs and since I pretend to be a local DJ they're shit out of luck. I have free-reign over the room since everyone wants to be cool with the bartender. "Hey, I'm Brendan, I might be the new guy." I also make it a point of making up a girlfriend for myself so that people don't think I'm trying to sleep with them.

After an hour of shaking hands with half the room, I walk up to the owner, "Look, I love this place. I understand it was rather off-the-hook last week, but I think I can handle this. You want me to come in tomorrow and you can show me my way around?"

"Talk to me later. You're being observed." I turn away with a boogie monster face on: oooo, look at me I'm scared. "Not by me, I've got uh..."

"You've got eyes in the back of everyone heads. It's like goddam Vietnam in here, eh?" I wish he hadn't done that, because I have to up the lie ante. I walk past Ben talking about Nirvana with the first DJ who went on. The diatribe he's in the middle of turns out to be. "I mean, yeah, so in a way I am looking for the next Nirvana. I mean, I see a lot of bands. Maybe three shows per night. So that's ten bands. And out of the ten bands I see every night, each one of them is pretty great, and maybe one of them is worth bringing to my boss. But out of ten bands that are worth bringing to my boss, maybe I'll bring her one. And out of ten bands I bring to my boss, all of them could be great and maybe already are. But maybe one will get a second listen. So they can either do what you're doing, you know? Just record it all themselves and make some CD's and sell 'em. Or they can assimilate and make themselves sound like The Shins, but, I mean, do you really wanna sound like The Shins?"

I start introducing myselves to DJs. I have no idea who went on already, but I decide that whoever's got a horse voice or is all sweaty has probably been working. "Shit was tight man. But what happened on the third song?"

"Needle skipped."

"Shit. That sound stage blows."

"Y'tellin me."

"Look, what's your schedule like?" They're usually pretty full. "Cause, I'm doing promo on this new club up in Wicker Park and they're looking to have some 4 AM wednesday nights. I'll be working Tuesdays for a while, but if this place is going off, I'd really like to get some good talent in." Within moments, I've got my notebook open and I'm getting emails and cell phone numbers and two-way numbers for some really talented DJs. Of course, I had to turn to a fresh page because the others all said things like. "Shit to Buy Someday When I have Actual Money 1) Real Groceries. 2) Cherry Coke 3) Shoes without holes..." And "Unemployment benefits will cut foodstamps benefits in half..."

Is it wrong to toy with people's dreams? Yes it is.

Is that what being a club promoter and a talent scout is all about anyway? Yes it is.

I hurt my shoulder jumping the turnstile on the way home and so I took one of my zebra-tranquilizers on top of three drinks and fell asleep immediately. Which means I slept through the call telling me to come down the bar immediately so I could talk to the boss. He likes me now.

New Interview, Totally Different Restaurant.

The setting is a downtown Chicago bar. Conveneint to banks, offices, and wherever else people work when they wear suits. I'm applying for the position of daytime bartender, which is basically a beer/wine wench for would-be wall-streeters.

"Ok, I'm going to put this delicately. Most nights we have an urban crowd."

"Alright, that's no problem."

"I mean, like a really, really urban crowd."

"Like bankers?" This place is in the most Hartford part of Chicago, and I still think he wants me for lunch.

"No, I mean, like we have a really, really urban crowd."

"Like...lawyers? I don't..." Wait a second. "...oh! You mean black people come in here."

"Yes, and I need to know that you're okay...working for...working in that environment." We go back to interviewing and I start making up some bullshit about all the drinks I can make Martini's, Margaritas, etc. He gets on the phone and I realize he's setting something up. "Babs...yeah...what time does all the, uh, the hooplah start tonight?...Alright, I think we're gonna do a little trial by fire...I don't wanna have to go out to my car and get an insulin shot..." Insulin? What the--"...great." He hangs up the phone.

"I like your style," I say, attempting to speak like him.

"Well, I'm not sure if I like you." Okay.

"So you want me to come in tonight and make drinks?" Shit, I need to go home and make a cheat-sheet. "I can do that."

"No, you're not going to do that. You're going to come in tonight and have three drinks on the house, on me, as it were. Tonight we have $2 appetizers. It's the biggest ghetto-night you'll ever see. You call me when you get here. Get your drinks. Then call me later and tell me if you still wanna work for me."

On the way out I talk to the smoking-hot bartender and tell her my situation. "Basically my interview is to drink."

"Well, the last bartender we hired was this little blond thing. Two hours into her first shift she told me she had to go to her car and get a shot of insulin. She left a note in the register saying, 'I'm really sorry, but I just can't handle this.'" So the question now is: What the fuck am I getting into? And furthermore: What if I hate the music there or don't like the food but end up taking the job just to prove a point? Will I go to such extreme lengths just to make someone else look bad? You're damn right I will.

Labels: Chicago

Foodstamp Tuesday is in full-effect.

Each month the state of Illinois will furnish me with $141 to buy groceries. That's $41 more, on average, than I paid for groceries last summer when I was living with Amanda. I don't want to jinx this, but I have already been approved for May, a month which ended yesterday, and the woman at the desk seemed to think that I would therefore have two months on my card by tomorrow.

I'll be skeptical for my own purposes. And Kevin, Rabbit Rabbit.