Yes, you’re on my mind, and yes, I continue to vacillate between hoping you’re dead in a ditch and aren’t.

Yes, but if I may go on record here and point out that how the hell was I supposed to know G/BF was setting her son’s voicemail when I thought Buddy over on ”All Over the Map“ got Farrah Fawcett’s cancer wrong!?? (He didn’t, btw.) And anyway, if I heard someone yelling “RECTAL CANCER!” on voicemail, I would it hilarious. I may be the only one, but I’m Ok with that.

So it goes without saying that life is a shit-ton better when I’m not dying of some flesh-eating virus’ cousin or whatever. The Cat & Co. visit over Memorial Day was a great time—spent a lot of time in the city learning ... stuff, like at the Field Museum, for instance: We were walking through the Animals of Africa and Antarctica and whatever when we came upon a walrus skeleton. I don’t know if y’all have ever SEEN a walrus skeleton, but as I was looking at it I notice there’s a rather large bone situated between its legs, and not like a tail. I pondered this for a moment before I whispered to Cat “Cat, are you seeing what I’m seeing here?” to which she was all, “Yeeeeeah, I see it.” So we pondered it a bit longer before sharing our findings with Mr. Rags (her ex-husband with whom she’s reconciled, huzzah!) out of earshot of T-man, who’s at that age where anything scat-related is the greatest thing ever. Well, later at dinner (and I gotta interject here for a moment that for those of you who love Emilio’s Tapas: It was good, but I still think Arco is way better. Too bad it was CLOSED the Sunday we were there for whatever reason, forcing us to almost have to eat at a REALLY expensive little Japanese joint that looked good based on the recommendation of the two gay gentlemen we interrupted at dinner and California Rolls she and I scarfed down to use the bathroom), Cat whipped out the old Crackberry to look up whether walruses have ... bones in their bones. Sure enough, ALL animals have weiner bones except for, like, four of them, of which man is included. So as Cat’s sharing this information, T looks at us and said, “I know what you guys are talking about,” and we were all “No, you don’t,” when he looks at Cat and points at his unit. I of course started cracking up while Mr. Rags had to explain that we don’t point at that in public. Anyway, Mr. Rags isn’t convinced that Cat and I actually left the museum to go shoe shopping while he and T went to see the museum’s Pirate thingy; he thinks we just stood there marveling at the walrus bone.

[Fun fact: Did you know walrus bones can get up to at least 4 feet long and that one time, one that size went up for auction with a starting price of $16K? Tons of people bidded on the thing because it’s an oddity and why wouldn’t you want a walrus weiner bone in your collection? True story.]

There are other stories to tell from that weekend—like the yentas sitting behind us at the Cubs game and another scatological exchange with the BoyofWad, but I think my favorite parts had to do with T and me; it got to the point where all we had to do was look at each other, and we’d just start laughing for no reason, thereby proving once again that I’m nothing if not 12. That’s one groovy little kid, though.

Now, things have taken a somewhat contemplative turn up in these here parts—a turn that has me itching for trouble. And it IS a full moon this weekend ...

Here’s another thing I hate about being a grown-up: Coming home from G/BF’s Monday night, my throat was bothering me again, so much so that I couldn’t move my tongue without wincing, right? I get home and head to the linen/medicine cabinet for some Tylenol only to discover my Tylenol had an expiration of 02/06, and I thought to myself, “Wait, it really couldn’t have been THREE FREAKIN’ YEARS** since I’ve bought Tylenol, and am I going to die if I take it? And when did I have to start paying attention to OTC med expiration dates, anyway? If I barely pay attention to the expiration of milk—when I even have it in the house—how can I be expected to pay attention to something with a longer date? Deh.” I ended up taking a shot of lemon juice and throwing back some ibuprofen, of which I’m (pretty) sure was bought more recently than ‘06 because it all but quelled the tongue/gland pain and didn’t kill me. I do have strep, though, so you know, that might.

Two words for this past weekend:

Freek Johnson.

Freek’s a local jazz quartet whose rhythm section is comprised of 2/3 of The Unit, and they played their first gig in awhile Saturday night. Yeah, I keep pimping out the guys as if I’m getting rich off doing it, and some of y’all are probably, “Jesus, whatever already” (I’ll tell you what’s “Jesus, whatever already”: The hillbillies at the end of the block who were neither drinking responsibly nor, more important, QUIETLY this morning at 2 a.m. This isn’t open acreage, you Cheech-sounding motherfucker, so how about taking the hootenannies inside!?), but ... unreal, people. Outside of a brief flirtation with Scofield when I dated the One-Eyed Wonder in high school, I know nothing about jazz other than it’s like a song that starts out as the skeleton, and it’s up to the musicians to weave the organs and muscles and skin and nerves and stuff around it, and it doesn’t always come out the same way twice. It was good, then, that I had no real musical reference on which to get stuck, because then I would’ve totally missed the sheer joy and artistry emanating from every pore as they played. The drummer, for example (yeah yeah yeah, it’s always the drummer, I know): I’ve seen him play just about every weekend since the end of January-start of February, and he’s always really good—hardly breaks a sweat, looks like he can do it in his sleep and probably does. Watching him play what he loves Saturday, though? “Visceral” comes close to describing it in that it felt as if someone just set him loose, and yet there was such control in everything he did. Just gorgeous to behold.

But here’s where the high drops kinda: As I was heading down 12 (which is one of my favorite drives in the whole world, but oddly just the heading-back part, not going toward) and flipping through the iPod looking for an even remotely challenging drumline, there wasn’t a one, and it reinforced the notion that playing in NWI really is a suckfest. Not that the guys don’t love playing, because they do, and they’re grateful to be as popular as they are. But like Cheeks and I were talking about earlier that evening, there’s a million other things they COULD play that would make THEM happy but would confound or completely turn off their audience, so what do you do? Still, just hearing how elementary the drum parts were in my playlist compared with what I now know he’s capable of was almost heartbreaking.

I was just sitting here ruminating over how I was going to even start telling y’all about the weekend when the one of the many levels of hell that is my job popped up in my inbox: It’s graduation time, and here’s the first of about 20 you’re going to get to cover! Want it!?? No, I DON’T want it, because damn Region people don’t know how to act during commencement ("WE LOVE YOU, NEECIE!"). But I will do what I always do, which is take as many as they shove down my gullet with the understanding that I’m going to bitch about it the whole time, because I’m nothing if not consistent.

I think the best way to sum up the weekend is it was Girlie/Bitch Fantastic’s (G/BF) weekend to alternately shine and crap out early. From the top: Friday night, I’d just gotten off the horn with my seester to solidify plans for her coming in (she didn’t, although she’s talking about coming in this Friday) when G/BF calls, first to bitch at me for not picking up my phone all day (I get like that sometimes) and then to enlist my help in finding her cousin who inexplicably went MIA. We were talking when all of a sudden her husband starts cussing and yelling like a fool for some reason I didn’t even catch, which is nothing new but whatever. We hang up and I press on with laundry when I get a text from her about 2:30 a.m.: “Relationship emergency. Get here now!”

Well, it’s really her story to tell, so I won’t share particulars except to say “LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE!” and that having the big, dead weight off her shoulders is already doing her a world of good. What WASN’T good was the lack of sleep the bullshit caused as you’ll see; I didn’t leave her crib until 6:15-ish, and I think she and Curlie were up a little longer than that.

(On the subject of dead weight, I should mention that in between all this, the phone rang twice, and whose number should it have been but that of TOG. Not sure if he dialed me by accident or was leaving a “calling card” so that I would get back to him, but the appropriate response, of course, would’ve been to not respond. I, however, am not quite in the mood at this point to not respond and would much rather be as annoying as humanly possible, so I texted some crappy little remark. No response, so I guess that makes HIM the mature one for not taking my bait. Good for him; he gets the cookie. Yawn.)

(I should also add that I’m not anti-men or anti-relationship at all; in fact, there’s a gentleman or two I might be interested in as we speak. I’m just fervently anti-dumbass, and an inordinate amount of male dumbasses have been pissing up my rope lately, is all.)

ANYWAY.

After about 5-ish hours, give or take, I got up and made my way over to Dark Lord Day, the widely popular beer festival Three Floyds throws to celebrate their signature stout that *I* think tastes like molasses but people are crazy-wild about. I covered the event, but after experiencing it once, I’m ready to get a crew and pitch a tent out there next year. Freakin’ thing is a Dead show, only with much nicer and less smelly people; they had the Waco Brothers out there performing and some other band I can’t remember but is supposedly really good. Well, so you can’t go to a beer fest without partaking; it’s not like I was getting out of there without trying some with all the beer hippies offering me a swig of this or swig of that, anyway. Let’s see, that was 2-ish, 3-ish in the afternoon? Came home, showered then picked up G/BF and Curlie and headed toward a breast cancer benefit where we caught Bravo Johnny in one of their two or three reunion gigs of the year. I’d never seen them before, but it kinda turns out I really didn’t need to—chicken-egg, you see. I mean, they are really, really good, but just saying.

At this point, we headed over to G-Town for TSB, and this is where it all started going to hell for G/BF, in no small part because I kinda happened to mention to my D-List celebrity BFFs that she’d had a rough weekend and may need some liquid assistance. They of course obliged and, well, lack of sleep + several 7-7-roses limes + a metric shit-ton of tequila shots = TKO, and by time we got to the boys, she was all “I can’t do it. I just can’t do it.” So Juggsie, G/BF’s pal of a zillion years, left Curlie and I with the boys, who were crooning “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You” to some busted-ass Rod Stewart lookalike (no seriously, this dude was rockin’ the hair) as we walked in, which freaked me out because ew? Really? Then, just as THAT debacle was over, some guy in a wheelchair offered to let Cheeks ride around with him, and who would Cheeks be not to take him up on that? I’m sure other shenanigans went on, but after getting into my second Stella, I too started to wane. White Castle (but not that pulled pork nonsense) was procured, the end.

Fun fact: G/BF calculated our spendings Saturday. Grand total = $200 worth of alcohol between the three of us. That’s a lotta booze, folks.

For those of y’all who aren’t on FB, I’m having issues with posting pictures from the night, so I’ll try to post them later.

(A summary of the Bower-Mollin wedding)

So, the wedding to end all weddings, right? I don’t even know where to start other than to say it truly was a fantastic night, full of joy and love, great friends, designer couture and all the free booze you could handle (as long as the bartenders were at their posts—whut up with dat, Ben-ha-meen? Like, every time the band went on break, so did the barkeeps.) Ben wore the hell out of his ascot, suit and silverish pimp shoes, of course, but Ann?

How ‘bout I just show you:


Ok, she doesn’t have a head in this shot,
but you had to see the back of the gown first
to get just how gorgeous it was. (Standing
next to her is her son, Lathan, who cut quite
a dashing figure in his mini-tux.)

Not good enough? Then how ‘bout this:


This was taken after mucho drinkage,
and she STILL looks unbelievable.
I, on the other hand, had started wilting
at that point.

Lessee, what else? Oooo! Here’s a cool shot of the Hava Nagila that killed my feet and knees:


Ben’s momma and pop sang it.


My seester and I as she took a break from
all that shooting (and man, did she get some
awesome shots.) (And if you’re thinking we
don’t look that much alike, you’re correct. I
got all the Eastern European features, while she
got the pretty skin that tans.)


Thas righ, Reality TV sneetchez! That most certainly
IS Steven Rosengard of Project Runway Cycle 4.
That’s who designed Ann’s incredible dress and day-before
wedding ensemble, which was equally sharp. (The hot chick
is Girlie, who accompanied me.)


Joe Winters and me. Don’t he clean up nice?


After Girlie and I split the reception, our presence
was requested at a local benefit at the Hobar
American Legion, where we ran into this cat,
the infamous Randy Anderson ("Buck Daddy”
to his musical fans). Evidently Randy doesn’t
remember ever seeing me without my specs,
because he kept marveling at my eyes the whole time.

And so as not to give you the impression that the wedding was all about me even though I acted like it with all that prep and planning my outfit, here’s one of my favorite moments of the night:


Right after the three of them walked out to
the chorus of “Come Sail Away” by Styx, Ben
yanked Lathan up and swung him around.

My other favorite moment was in the video of the wedding: The moment the judge told Ben to kiss his bride, the sheer elation on their faces was proof enough that they’re going to be a couple for the ages. You don’t see love like that often, and it’s always so breathtaking to see.

And then I started doing a little jig at the bar.

I’ve talked about my sister’s mad picture-taking skillz before, but I have to say I’m in awe of this one:



It’s Lulu Buttons, and it was taken as the tea party (with a genuine butler and everything, might I add) she attended this past Sunday was winding down. It’s killing me how grown up and gorgeous she is already, and could you just DIE over the dress!??

Why yes, my sister DOES take pictures professionally. If you local people want the hook-up, lemeno.

Word of advice to your mothers: If y’all ever get the hankering to send someone a racy text message, I am NOT the person to ask help in crafting it. Also, I’m really wondering exactly when it was that I turned into such a huge dork.*

It’s now almost 12 hours into year 38 for me, and I at least I no longer feel like I’ve been beaten about the upper back with a truncheon (even after yesterday’s 3-hour nap, necessitated by one of my editors who thought it would be funny to have me up and working yesterday morning after an extra-late night). But it was a good pain in which to suffer; anything that can restore my faith in the NWI music scene with the sheer joy akin to getting picked up by a 20-something and then bent over the hood of a car signifies a good night all around.

I’m not even sure I can describe Friday night’s show with River Oaks, FIL and The Steepwater Band other than with a slack-jawed “Whoa ...” Like, put your drink down and stare in wonder at how three skinny boys from Portage can make all that rock. Just unreal. At one point, guitarist Jeff Massey did this thing where both his hands were on the base of the guitar, and it was all “weedleeweedleeweedleeweedleeweedleeeeeeeee!” with fingers flying, swear to God. I’ve never seen anything like it. River Oaks, led by my D-list celebrity BFF hairstylist Ben Mollin (I love bringing that up), opened up the gig, and it was the quirkiest of the three—Girlie describes it as “middle-aged punk,” while FIL was hard-driving power pop(Girlie and I hate this cliche, but I have no better way of describing them at the moment). Then Steepwater, then a jam featuring Steepwater and NWI guitar virtuoso-leprechaun Danny Giorgi, who can sing backup with a cigarette in his mouth like no other. Seriously, I can’t say enough about these guys, and not just because they’re friends of mine. (Sidenote: Are they REALLY going to make them play the last freakin’ second of the Super Bowl!?? Really!??) So, when Steepwater comes to a bar near you, treat yourself and go. Oh, and I would say go buy something of theirs off iTunes, but keep in mind that magic can’t really be recorded well.

Second day of my birthday weekend: Up at the asscrack to work, then lunch with Kaffy, then sleeping. Glorious sleeping.

Today was lunch with Mother—who’s doing well with the anti-psychotic, and that’s the best gift for which I could ask, really—and now I’m over at Girlie’s for Crap TV night after hanging at her family restaurant for the Super Bowl. Have I told y’all lately that my peeps are the greatest peeps in the world? Because they really are, and I love every one of them. The birthday wishes have me all mooshie and stuff, even the drinks from my Facebook pals whom I’ve never met. It’s nice being remembered.

I’ll post pics from Friday night when I get home...

12:26 ayem: Ok, I’m home now, so pics ahoy below the fold (please note that for my purposes here, I ran some of these through Photoshop quick fix, so colors and stuff are going to look wonky): 

but it won’t let me re-upload the following after I played around with it in Photoshop. It’s one of the shots my sister the budding photographer was thinking about using for her Christmas cards this year—and she may have, but she hasn’t sent them out yet, proving once again that apples don’t fall far from trees. Behold:

and miserable about a boy, so I could use some positive reinforcement, por favor.

sometimes, the universe really does pull through and keeps one from diving off the ledge. Thank you, Universe!

after unexpectedly seeing someone you still sort ofused to have feelings for, you have explosive diarrhea? I mean, is it coincidence or subconscience? Seriously.

Anybody as excited as I am that The Sopranos is coming to A&E!?? I’m, like, DYING, I can’t wait. Yes, it’s been out on DVD for five, six years now. Yes, it’s been on every version of HBO known to man. But I watch only three, four stations at the most, and my dial is always set to A&E. I’ll never have to think about changing the channel again!

I spent today cleaning my kitchen from top to bottom, or essentially top to bottom since I didn’t touch the top of the fridge or the insides of the oven or microwave (wasn’t quite THAT ambitious). Not only did I clean it, but for the first time in many, many months a while, I cooked, as in REAL food, not frozen pizza as I’m wont to do. I didn’t even BUY frozen pizza, as I also rediscovered that grocery shopping ain’t cheap. But it was either that and have some food for the next two weeks that I’m going to be piss poor or risk overdrawing my account and put myself into a huge hole that my next check won’t be able to cover.

(Which reminds me: Several people have been giving me grief asking me if I’ve finally given up the dream of living as a near-starving writer because they haven’t seen my byline in awhile. The answer is no, I’m still an intrepid reporter; it’s just that everything I work on shuts down in December, and then it takes a couple weeks for everything to ramp back up. It would be cool if the people that were asking were doing so because they miss my writing, but alas, the concern is more that I’m going to be hitting them up for rent. Such is the life of an intrepid reporter.)

Anyway, I about bowled Kaffy over when I told her all I’d done today; the best part was when she said that if I’d actually cooked real food, that had to have meant that I had to have gone to the grocery store for more than Pepsi and cat necessities.

Guess you had to be there.

Going along with the whole cleaning bit (though on a much lesser scale), over the past few days I’ve taken a cue from Ms. Pants and gone through some of my old entries about certain things in an attempt to purge them from my world, start 2007 anew, yadayadayada—not the entries themselves, but the impetus behind them. What I can say about the exercise is that while I still feel strongly, seeing what I said and what I felt at the time feels really foreign to me, like it doesn’t even compute. And ... that probably didn’t explain anything at all, but I’m all right with that. I’m in a comfortable, reasonable place right now, without much regret about anything that happened last year. Of course, I’m not saying, “I’m never ever going to let someone treat me like that again ever in a million years ever!”, because there’s nothing I distrust more than the absolute. I’m just saying that looking back at it fascinates me in way I’ve never been, kind of like looking at an experiment that’s gone horribly wrong.

On that note, I totally want this, and I’ve got a birthay coming up. Just saying.

Since I’m one of those who believes the universe has this (sometimes cruel) way of presenting one with all the information one needs to realize whatever it is they’re supposed to, I’ve been getting a lot of refresher courses on domestic abuse lately. Today’s lesson came via my morning assignment: The county sponsored a seminar for stylists and other salon professionals on how to spot abuse in their clients. And this seminar of course had a workbook detailing the types of abuse, i.e. isolation, denial and blame, coercion and threats, economic and male privilege. Well, under “emotional abuse,” what should they have detailed but “Tries to make you think you’re crazy,” and under reasons women stay with abusers, it lists “Guilt over failure of relationship” and “Guilt about choosing an abuser?”

There’s an oooof for you if I ever seen one.

The other lesson came Saturday night when, against my better judgment, I went out with an acquaintance that I normally know better than to set foot out the door with, but did anyway because ... well, because. Anyway, she and I go to see a local band that wasn’t my homies (for which I got shit today, but you know, got to check out the competition, too), and it started off lovely—met some new people, got stinkin’ drunk, had guys staring at my bodacious tatas because my tank top kept slipping, had some good hair going ... you know, chillin’ and illin’.

I should’ve realized that was not going to last, however, when said acquaintance started talking about how her boyfriend hadn’t acknowledged Sweetest Day, like, before we even got out the door.

After two songs or three songs into the second set, Acquaintance decides we’re leaving because she hasn’t heard from the boyfriend since before we left for the evening, and we’re going over there, but would I take her car home? ‘k, I think to myself; she’ll go in to his crib, they’ll decide it was all a big misunderstanding, and I’ll be home about 2-ish. Yeah, I don’t know how long I was passed out in the car, but I wake up to Boyfriend telling me in very broken English, yet in no uncertain terms, that I needed to get her out of there, because he doesn’t want to have to call the police. All right, I say as Boyfriend storms off into the night. Naturally, Acquaintance is having none of that—even though he’s broken up with her in the time that she went inside and I passed out—so we’re going into the house and waiting for him and his friend (who speaks even less English than boyfriend) to return.

In the hour or so that we waited for them, she called him what had to have been three or four times (he turned his phone off, of course) and proceeded to repeat over and over the whole shpiel of what I missed. Oh, and she isn’t leaving, but I could, which, cool! this was getting a little too crazy for me. So I take off, only to get about two blocks down when she calls me to pick her up a pack of smokes.

Sigh.

Shortly after, the two men return, and Acquaintance chases him first to his room, then to the garage, then to the front of the house and then back to the garage while I’m sitting there drunk and trying to carry on a conversation with a man who speaks marginal English at best. They come back into the house, and since physically moving away from her wasn’t working, Boyfriend decides to play like he’s sleeping on the couch so maybe she’d back the hell off. That only made Acquaintance sit on the edge of the couch and poke him to wake up. He goes back to his room, she follows ... you get the idea. At some point, she tells me I can go again and she’ll call someone else to come get her in the morning. WONderful! I think. I’m out!

Until I got the phone call that he pushed her out of the house, come get her.

Sigh.

I go back, and the friend is coming out of the house. Where are they now? I ask, and he shrugs his shoulders and gets in his car. She then comes around the corner and gets into the car with me and starts telling me how he grabbed her and pushed her. And then? The drunken hysteria started, followed by the “I didn’t do anything wrong” proclamation. Now, you won’t get me to excuse a man for resorting to violence toward a woman ever, but saying that getting all up into his grill isn’t “doing anything wrong?”

Long story short, I didn’t get to bed until 7 a.m. Sunday morning. The end.

For enduring my tale of woe, below is a shot of me taken earlier in the evening, when I was drunk and rockin’ out:

that not only was I glad for the pain I know someone is enduring right this second, but that I’d love to stick my finger in their eye for good measure, would that make me a total asshole? You know, as opposed to the asshole I already am.