Pleasures

The precatory theme of this blogpost is Pleasures.  Not the small-p of little delights, but the big-P of Estée Lauder's sheer, spirited, and shimmering scent.  NK has worn this it least since we were sixteen, and I love nostalgia almost as much as I love NK, so no matter how objectively unpleasant the smell may be, I love it nonetheless. 

That's the theme, and let's go with it.

First, I worked until 10 p.m.  I also did not arrive at work until 10 a.m. because I took an Ambien last night and lay like a gutted fish in my bed for eight unconscious hours.  I like my job though I stayed for twelve hours today to finish up an incomprehensible motion for summary judgment on the Fair Credit Reporting Act.  No matter how objectively unpleasant the smell may be, I love it nonetheless. 

Second, I biked home at 10 p.m. The windchill brought the temperature down to 24 degrees, but I've devised a layering system - sticky t-shirt, doublethick wool sweater, polyproplene sleeves, windbreaker, balaclava that is so encrusted in my dried spittle that it smells like a vagina when I pull it over my face, ski gloves, ski socks that go up to my knees, sneakers and a newish pair of thickish jeans - that seems to cut out the cold okay. If it's 24 degrees in November, what happens in January? But I like the commute home. I like to bike in cities. I commuted less when I lived in New York because I thought it more pleasant to hold hands with my lover on the L train than to schlep up the Williamsburg Bridge by bike. Here in Chicago, no such threat. I exit the Dirksen building onto a stunning view of a forty-foot Alexander Calder sculpture set in front of a dizzying skyline. 

That's really what it looks like when I leave my workplace.  When I leave late I get this entire scene to myself. Obama's offices are just to the left of the Flamingo so the whole post office (the big glass box in the picture above) is barricaded off now. And then I get a chilly bike ride through mostly quiet streets, and my nose runs and I get home sweaty and thirsty and in fifteen minutes and I make my balaclava even more vagina-smelling in the process. No matter how objectively unpleasant the smell may be, I love it nonetheless.

Third, I have a profile up on an online dating site and I am making plans to "date" some people - all men; remember, the thought of some hairy foreign clam roils my bowels, even more so than the thought of smegma-stuffed sausages; let's just stop there, shall we? - and in fact I am going on what may be a date (let us pray it is not) with the seven thousand-year old con artist I mentioned a few posts back. He's the one who cornered me at Kafka on the Shore and told me he was a voice actor? I am going to see Spike Lee's newest movie with him tomorrow because (1) why not, I'm straight and single and who cares if he's fifty-five million unattractive years old? (2) he said he was on the SAG Awards nominating committee and was going to see the movie as part of the nominations series, so it would be a new experience for me and why not?  Dating when you're crushed with loneliness is pretty much awesome, because you have no standards. No matter how objectively unpleasant the smell may be, I love it nonetheless.

Fourth, Shaw had a dinner party last night. You will recall that Shaw is my roommate the professional chef. She was just promoted and will be the managing chef of Rick Bayless' forthcoming third restaurant, name TBD. So she's pretty handy around the kitchen. The other day she suggested that I make black bean gruel instead of the chili-based gruel I usually make, and she suggested a recipe, and then as I haplessly butchered the unbutcherable boiled black beans recipe on the stove, she swooped in, stirred things, added a fistful of salt and whole cumin seeds, and made my week's gruel delicious! On the menu last night was bacon-wrapped pork loins (family reunion!) with a cherry-based sauce, green beans roasted with crushed almonds, and fingerling potatoes chopped up into the size of chopped-up babies' fingers, and dessert was a 10000% chocolate that Shaw had made with cacao beans she roasted herself with pecan wood. OMFG. She invited some friends of friends, whom I instinctively despised because they were all over 5'10" but who were generally nice enough, and I invited my co-clerks who did not come because they are (1) observant Muslim, not into the pig-wrapped-pig entree, and (2) observant pescatarian, not into the pig-wrapped-pig entree, and CJ's awesome friends BM and RI, who did come over and outlasted the Amazons and stayed until late drinking wine and talking about San Miguel's fantasyland architecture and incestuous community of ex-pats, and Dolores Olmedo Patiño, Diego Rivera's nasty old patroness. RI did his impression of Mike Ditka, which involved him saying, "You're just such a good kid. I can tell you're such a good kid. You're a good kid" with his chin tucked down against his chest. We talked about Chicago pride and the blue-collary, down-to-earthy, sports-loving, not-too-vain attitude that so many people here seem to have. It's a nice place to spend some time! No matter how objectively unpleasant the smell may be, I love it nonetheless. 

That sentence has nothing to do with the dinner party or Chicago or anything else, but this post uses epistrophe so it had to be said. That's also the title of the first jazz song I ever thought worth listening to.  Thelonious Monk had it right - jazz songs are epistrophes, because they always return to the head at the end of the solos! (Why don't you click through the link and have a listen? He plays it solo piano in this clip, with a charming ragtimey hop on the left hand.) Jazz is a Pleasure too.  No matter how objectively unpleasant the smell may be, I love it nonetheless.

Ok, nevermind the theme, it doesn't make sense. RC asked me to watch Obama's 60 Minutes interview and write some thoughts about it, and because I love RC (maybe) even more than I love Obama, here goes: I WANT TO BE THE WHITE HOUSE DOG I CAN SHIT ON THE LAWN PICK ME PICK ME PICK ME. I generally have nothing intelligent to say about Obama. Policies? Sure moderate whatever! Politics? Do whatever it's all shrewd! My response to him is purely visceral. He makes my viscera feel calm and protected and perfectly pitched to. I LOLed and LOLed when Michele talked about the hole in young Obama's car, and I nodded attentively when Obama mentioned some unpleasant realities about Detroit's future. RI said last night that when Obama campaigned in Green Bay, he opened his speech by telling all those cheddarheads "I'm a Bears fan," to rounds of boos, as part of his theme of telling the great industrial north things that were true but that they probably didn't want to hear. Effing genius. So sorry RC if you were expecting measured commentary, but I'm still a rabid fanboy two weeks after the end of the damn election, and all I can think is I WANT TO BE THE WHITE HOUSE DOG PICK ME PICK ME.

And finally, my band had its first show on Saturday. Guess what? We rocked that shit.  I was being all euphemistic pessimisty in my last post about it, but I was just being a crazy neurotic bicht. Before the show, I was worried that we weren't learning the songs quickly enough or well enough, but in the end it didn't matter. First, the sound at the Mutiny was godawful anyway - it wasn't the engineer's fault, something was wrong with the bass amp so that it sounded like there was an airplane engine in the room - so it's not like practice would have changed that. Second, it didn't matter because we had awesome attitudes and we rocked that shit. The other three acts were great in their own right, especially Kim's husband's energetic band of lunatics, but they were also all brooding punk/indie boys, so it was easy to be bubbly, upbeat, poppy girls in contrast. It also did not hurt, for better or worse, that there were six gazongas onstage. 

Anyway, I think the crowd liked us. Which was to be expected, since we invited the crowd. I played lead and sang on my songs, and Steph played lead and sang on her songs, and Kim rocked steady on the drums.  Our first song, which we will open every gig with, is called "Sally Crumb" - our band is called Salacious Crumb, although we were billed as "Falacious Crumb" and then called out as "Fallacious Cum" - and is a screamcore metal song with Kim on the guitar, Steph on the drums, and me very calmly, very unscreamcorily laying down the low end.  Steph's songs sound like Breeders songs and are very catchy.  Girls in the audience shouted at us to take our clothes off, and we shouted back "You first!" During the part of one of my songs where I sing "Giddyup!" eighteen times in a row, one young thing started slapping his thighs and holding imaginary reins out in front of him. The stage was set up funny so that whoever was playing bass was across an aisle from the rest of the band, so when I played bass, I tried not to be noticed but hopped up and down a little bit in the corner. My cranberry juice (teetotaling because flu, sleepy, nervous, Chinese) spilled on my setlist and then BM brought up some napkins up which got scattered around and stuck to my shoes, so during the last song I looked very cool and rocknroll trying to play bass while unsuccessfully attempting to remove Kleenex from my heels.  My feet looked like piñatas and I saw the same girl who had shouted at me to "Take it off!" pointing and laughing in an not-mean way at/with me. 

When I sang I tried to stop my habit of tilting my head to the left, but, according to the photos that Kim posted on Facebook, did not succeed in that effort.  I did not fuck up too badly on my guitar solos! It was very, very fun. 

Here's Kim and Steph. We weren't paid but we got free drinks, so Kim had two of these huge Amaretto stone sours before our set. She's an awesome drummer though, and didn't miss a beat. She's also a fantastic person, as is Steph - I got lucky with this band. 

The club looked just like this: dingy, dark, full of holes. The first band played in almost complete darkness. I don't know how Neil could even see his fretboard. They turned the lights on for the other bands, but two of them blew out during the show. When we arrived to set up, no one was in the bar except for single old men and the bartendress.  I saved money and took the subway up with my heavy guitar case and then walked half a mile from the stop to the bar, which was a terrible idea because my forearm cramped up from lugging the case and I couldn't unfurl my fist for about half an hour - not good for playing guitar! Also, I used the men's room and found a coffin-sized urinal inside. Honestly, why did someone design a urinal to be this large? 

Possibly the best part of the night was meeting people before and after the show. It's a rare time in Chicago when I'm not feeling like an unclever, uncharming alien. But people were being so friendly and I was so high on performing that I felt relaxed and happy and like my clever self. Kim's husband and his bandmates were effusive and complimentary. People were so decent! I shouted loudly for their band because they were technically flawless and also had a great act - their lead singer was a nerdy pudgy guy who wore glasses and a hoodless sweatshirt and worked his Telecaster like Yo-Yo F'ing Ma and screamed "I'm gonna fucking kill you!" at his hecklers/fans in the crowd, not in a violent way, but in a funny way. They were worried about going last (at 1 a.m.) but a big crowd of their UIC friends came out to support them after all. 

Before we went onstage, Steph told me and Kim a story about a horrid bitchy ex-friend who bitched her out at a party for seemingly no reason, refused to apologize afterward, then tried to apologize, then flipped 180 again and bitched her out again. We shook our heads and said, No more, no more, no more people who are bitchy and mean for no reason. It was a theme that night for me. It was a night for decency and friendliness and supportiveness and music. I smiled a lot and clapped a lot and tried to flirt with everyone. Not for purposes of sexiness, but to make people feel loved. You know those nights? I had one of those. 

Now I have gone and written too much. I also have some stuff to say about heartbreak, loneliness blah blah, not mine but other people's, but it's late and I have jury instructions to write tomorrow morning. Good night!