—by Benny Jay on May 24th, 2009
I’m in Charleston, Illinois for the girls high school track championship. Me and the gang: Bobby Gee, Casey, the CPA, and Caldow. Super track freaks every one.
We broiled for hours in the sun, watching the qualifying rounds and now we’re at a restaurant for dinner. I’m famished. Eating like a buyer — like I ran the races….
Caldow is talking about a track meet that happened two zillion years ago.
Did I tell you I love talkers? Well, I do. I’m drawn to them like a moth to a flame. I’m thinking of getting them together for a party. You could charge people to attend, it be so entertaining. Just off the top of my head I’d have to invite Daddy Dee, Alonzo, Johnny (the black Forest Gump), and Lavinia’s Uncle John. And Caldow — gotta have Caldow. Of all the talkers, he may talk the most. I think the man was born talking….
Afterwards, we head over to Wal-Mart to by some stuff. I’m wandering around the big, old store with Bobby Gee and Casey.
Casey says: “I need a pillow….”
This being a Wal-Mart, there’s about a million to pick from. She can’t make up her mind.
Bobby Gee plucks one from the pile and says: “Get this one. It’s only five bucks — plus it’s red….”
I don’t have anything to buy. But I pass the school supply section and I see they have notebooks on sale. They’re the little, itty-bitty flip-over kind that fit into your back pocket. It’s like four for $1.29. I can’t resist. I buy three packets. Then I see a pack of pencils. I don’t need pencils. I don’t even use pencils. But, there’s twenty-five to a pack. Plus, they have all sorts of brightly colored erasers. Again, I can’t resist. I take a pack.
We go to the self check out line. I’m not sure what to do. I’m standing at the machine, looking at it. Big Mike was right — I have this phobia about machines. I have this fear that if I make the wrong move something terrible will happen. I make a mental note to myself: Gotta get some psychological assistance for this machine thing….
But Jamika, one of the girls on Bobby Gee’s team, steps up to show me how to use the machine. She wipes the notebooks and pencils across the scanner. Pushes the right buttons. Inserts credit card. The whole thing. The girl’s a freaking genius. Just call her Wilma Gates….
I’m so grateful I give her a pencil. Throw in an eraser too — you know, as a bonus.
We’re in the car, backing out of the parking space. Bobby Gee says: “Let me know if I hit anyone….”
“Just a small child,” says Jamika.
I’m really impressed. First the machine. Now comedy. The girl’s got jokes. Who knew?
I wind up with Caldow in Bobby Gee’s dorm room — yes, we’re staying in a dormitory — watching a movie on Bobby Gee’s computer. It’s the movie “Taken,” starring Liam Neeson. Here’s all you need to know about “Taken.” It’s really stupid. I mean, really, really, really, really stupid. Neeson plays this super-strong, super-smart ex-CIA agent whose 17-year-old daughter gets taken (hence the title) by a bunch of Albanian thugs who plan to sell her as a sex slave. I’m not making any of this up.
Did I tell you the movie’s really stupid? Well, it is. But here’s the thing. I get into it. I mean, way into it. I can’t help myself. It moves really fast as Neeson goes after the bad guys to save his daughter. And here’s the best part of all. I got Caldow doing the commentary. Everything that happens he’s got something to say. Neeson shoots someone, Caldow says: “Those CIA guys are good shots. That’s all they do — practice shooting all day.”
Neeson kills a guy with a karate chop, Caldow says: “Now, that’s how you kill somebody. Crack. Split their neck. It’s over….”
This bad guy drives a car into a bridge that knocks his head off his neck, and Caldow says: “You’re dead. Next….”
Neeson kills a ton of bad guys while trying to save his daughter. Caldow’s got something to say about each death. I never knew the guy knew so much about murder.
Plus, he’s giving Neeson advice — like the guy, you know, can hear him. Stuff like: “Look out.” Or, “his gun needs a silencer. Use a silencer.” Or, “duck.” Stuff like that.
The climactic scene occurs on a boat that’s running down the middle of the Seine. It’s not really a boat so much as a super big yacht that’s owned by this sheik who has a thing for virgins. So the movie boils down to this: Can Neeson save his daughter before the sheik deflowers her?
There’s got to be — oh, conservative guess — fifteen bad guys protecting the sheik. Each one has at least two guns. Neeson doesn’t even have a pistol. Yet he manages to mow them all down. He kills a guy with a karate chop, takes the dead guy’s gun and shoots the other bad guys. You get the idea.
Eventually, it comes down to Neeson and the sheik, who has a knife to the throat of Neeson’s daughter.
Bam, Neeson shoots him. The bullet whizzes past his daughter’s head to splatter the sheik’s brains. “I told you those CIA guys can shoot,” exclaims Caldow. Like what we saw, you know, really happened.
The daughter hugs Neeson. But Caldow’s one step ahead of us. “Look out,” he says.
“What?” I ask.
“Who’s driving the boat?”
“Huh?”
“They killed everyone. So who’s driving the boat?”
“You’re right,” I say. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Cause you’re not Yoda,” he says. “The all-powerful one….”
Apparently the movie maker felt no need to address the all-important question of who’s driving the boat. Because the movie ends a few minutes later and they never tell us how they got off the boat.
“Neeson must have killed two dozen people,” I say.
“Let’s count `em,” says Caldow. He starts tallying up the carnage, scene by scene. The guy’s like a machine. He remembers murders from the movie that I had long forgotten. He’s breaking them down by categories: decapitations, shootings, blows to the brain and so forth.
He loses count at twenty-something. But it’s late. We’re tired. We go to bed.
The next morning at breakfast, we’re feeling refreshed. Caldow and I pick up where we left off, trying to count up exactly how many bad guys Neeson killed…..
—by Big Mike on May 23rd, 2009
I’ve never been terribly comfortable being a guy. It’s not that I’ve ever thought about changing my sex. I’d be equally – if not, more – uncomfortable being a woman, what with how they’ve been treated by the guys of this world. So don’t worry, this isn’t a confessional about my hitherto undisclosed desire to become the next RuPaul (RuBig Mike?)
It’s just that guys are jerks. And the more guys who gather in a room, the more the jerk factor shoots upward. In fact, with the addition of each single guy, the jerkiness factor increases exponentially.
Want proof? Go to a bachelor party. Walk into a cop bar. Peek into a men’s locker room. Hell, the jerkiest religions in the world are those that relegate woman to the status of quadrupeds. Ever hear of a Catholic priest named
Mary (outside of
Halsted Street, that is)? Orthodox Jews say a
prayer every morning thanking god that they weren’t born women. And, of course, in the strict Islamic world, women would be taking a giant step up to achieve the status of sheep.
Guy-ness even pervades art. I usually keep my utter distaste for hip-hop and rap music quiet. To be honest, I don’t want to open myself up to the charge that I’m a bitter old prick who hates anything the kids are listening to nowadays. While it’s true I am a bitter old prick, I love a lot of new music. The
Decemberists.
Feist.
My Morning Jacket.
Radiohead. The list goes on. But I loathe hip-hop and rap because it’s so
guy. Hip-hop guys are always getting laid, drinking expensive Champagne, wearing precious metals, rolling in dough and calling every female on the planet up to and including flowering plants that contain the ovule-bearing structure, the pistil,
bitches. Hip-hop and rap are way too
guy.
I found myself surrounded by guys at Dick’s Pizza the other night. One of those things. For some unknown reason, there wasn’t a single woman in the house. There were the two bartenders, Hank and Rock-star Zach. There were Old Gus, Dinesh, All-American Allen, a couple of strangers and your faithful reporter. It was a sausage fest.
Old Gus is the epitome of senior guy-ness. He drives an aircraft carrier-sized Buick. He carries a came with an ornate gold knob. He was married a long, long time ago but he left his wife after a month and has remained a happily dispeptic bachelor ever since.
Dinesh comes from India. Once I asked him how the average Indian views Pakistanis. Normally a reserved man, Dinesh became an orator. He launched into a half-hour examination of the many socio-political, cultural and religious issues that divide the two nations. But as he went on, his anger mounted. He finally concluded with the statement, “D’ey are no goot! D’ey are pieces of sheet!” He couldn’t resist, in other words, being a guy.
All-American Allen, whom I’ve introduced previously in this space, is a staunch Republican. You know, the party of white guys.
Bartenders Hank and Rock-star Zach are reasonably decent fellows although Zach plays lead guitar for a local band that gets a lot of radio airplay around these parts. Ergo, guy.
On the evening in question, the jowly, ever-outraged face of Lou Dobbs loomed above us on the three giant flat screens over the bar. Lou Dobbs is a king among guys. As if there weren’t enough to send Dobbs’s blood pressure skyrocketing, he’d found a video of an unfortunate incident on some big city bus. As captured on the bus’s security cameras, a young man walked on, paid his fare, took two steps toward the handicapped seats and suddenly, without provocation, began whacking the shit out of some poor blind woman. Oh, the steam was pouring out of Dobbs’s ears.
The gang of guys at Dick’s was transfixed. We watched as several fellow riders tackled the assailant and threw him off the bus. Dobbs called them heroes. But my barmates weren’t in a mood to laud heroes.
“They shoulda held him and called the cops,” Rock-star Zach announced. “I hope they put him in jail and show that video to all the other guys in jail every morning. Then he’d get what’s coming to him!”
“They shoulda beat him bloody!” All-American Allen proclaimed.
“I know what I would have done to him,” Old Gus said in a loud voice, “I would have stuck my cane up his ass right then and there!”
“D’at guy ees a piece of sheet,” Dinesh said in a louder voice. “D’ey should shoot him in d’e forehead!”
There followed a three-minute orgy of can-you-top-this with the two strangers joining in. I listened patiently until the orgy died down a bit, then spoke.
“Has it occurred to anyone that maybe, just maybe, the guy’s mentally ill?”
The bar became silent. Either the guys were wowed by my intellect and sense of compassion or they’d exhausted all their rage. Aw, I’ll stop kidding myself. They’d spewed all the bile they could muster. They were spent.
Hank sidled near me just as a different video of some thugs pummeling an old man in a playground flashed on the screens. “What’s wrong with people?” Hank asked.
I pondered for a moment. “People?” I responded. “Or guys?”
—by Jon Randolph on May 22nd, 2009
This is a personal look at mid-America from north to south that I shot between 1976 and 1985. At the times I shot these pix, the approximately 1700 miles of
US Highway 61 roughly followed the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Minneapolis, then jutted northeast to Duluth and along the western edge of Lake Superior to Thunder Bay, Ontario.
The work documents the people, towns and fields along…
continued below pix
Greyhound bus at the Missouri/Arkansas border.
Nybo’s bar & cafe, Minnesota.
Table, Mississippi.
TV, Arkansas.
Umbrella, Keokuk, Iowa.
Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.
continued from above pix
… the way in more of a personal sense than a journalistic one.
This is the first installment – part two will run next Friday. There’s a lot to look at. – JR
Visit The Third City every day. Randolph Street, camera candy from photojournalist Jon Randolph, runs every Friday. – The Eds.
—by Benny Jay on May 21st, 2009
Got a cold. Came last week. Thought it would go away. But it only got worse. Burrowed in my chest. Now it sounds like it’s here to stay. Fuck….
Got me hacking like a mug. Sounds like I’ve been smoking two packs a day for the last twenty years. I should be up and at `em, working the phones. But all I wanna do is sleep….
I lie in bed. Tell myself — this will only take five minutes. Just need a little rest….
Thirty minutes later I wake up and look around. Where the hell am I? In bed. Ugh. Start coughing. That leads to hacking. My stomach muscles ache. I feel sorry for myself.
I call my wife at work. “Do you have the swine flu?” she asks.
The swine flu! Damn. I hadn’t thought of that.
“Take your temperature,” she says.
I find the thermometer buried behind the Band-aids in the bathroom cabinet. I shove it in my mouth: 98.3. I feel better. Then I think: What if I didn’t take it right? What if my mouth was open too much? I have this notion that somehow or other keeping my mouth open lowers the temperature. I take it again. And again. I become obsessive about my temperature. It’s like the Bulls versus Boston one more time. I’m losing my freaking mind….
I go back to bed and look up at the fan. I turn to my right. There’s a Reader’s Digest on the night stand. Reader’s Digest? How did that get here? I haven’t seen a Reader’s Digest in years.
I wind up reading an article called, “America’s Funniest Jokes.” Sid Caesar and seven other comics are sitting around a table in the back room of a deli, swapping jokes. Here’s the first joke: “A man, shocked by how his buddy is dressed, asks him, `how long have you been wearing that bra?’ The friend replies, `Ever since my wife found it in the glove compartment.’”
It must be the illness. But I find that hilarious. I can’t stop laughing. I laugh so hard I start to hack. Then cough. Uncontrollably. Finally, I settle down. I’m lying on the bed. The dog’s looking at me.
I start calling friends: Milo, Big Mike, Norm, Daddy Dee. I gotta talk to someone. Let the world know I’m still alive. They’re all healthy. Busy. Doing shit. Big Mike’s making bread, for Christ sakes. I’m not kidding. He’s rolling out the freaking dough himself. Jesus. The whole world’s doing stuff and I’m lying in bed.
I pick up Reader’s Digest — need another joke. I read about the priest, the minister and the rabbi who want to see who’s best at their job. So they go into the woods, find some bears and attempt to convert them. The priest’s so good he gets his bear to its first communion. The minister talks his bear into getting baptized. “They both look down at the rabbi, who is lying on gurney in a body cast. `Looking back,’ he says. `Maybe I shouldn’t have started with the circumcision.’”
I think that’s hilarious. The rabbi cut the bear’s dick — get it? I’m roaring. Then I’m hacking and coughing. Aw, hell….
I roll on my back. I drift off. I hear a phone ringing. It’s way off in the distance. I’ll answer it later. When I get better….
—by Big Mike on May 20th, 2009
A couple of guys I know are trying to start their own web site. One of them – let’s call him Barney Kay – is an admitted dope when it comes to technology, the Internet, electronics, machinery and, for that matter, chewing his food. He wears his ignorance as a badge of honor. He leans on friends and acquaintances to help him through crises like computer crashes and those rare occasions when he gets a bit of celery stuck between his teeth. He has lent one ear each to his friend the track coach and his college-student daughter, who guide him through modern life’s puzzles. Barney sings their praises as if they are the second coming of the Steves, Wozniak and Jobs.
The other fellow – call him Brainy Brian – tells his pal Barney that he knows this computer business like the back of his hand, that the two of them have no need for such self-proclaimed experts as track coaches and college-student daughters. He holds Barney Kay’s hand through countless phone conversations wherein the two try to navigate the treacherous waters of the cyberworld.
Barney Kay and Brainy Brian made the decision to go online with their rants and flights of literary fancy early last fall. First, they honed their voices on a free blog site. Once they became good at it, they told each other, they’d create their own free-standing site. By Christmas, they knew they were ready to strike out on their own. They’d never missed a day of posting and kept each other entertained throughout.
As any schoolchild knows, it takes the click of a
Buy This Package Now! button to start a web site. But Brainy Brian has convinced Barney Kay that they should study web hosts, web builders and the like with all the zeal of
Marie and Pierre Curie trying to decipher the mysteries of radium.
“We must do this the right way,” Brainy Brian proclaims.
“Yeah sure, but how do we know what’s the right way?” responds Barney Kay.
“Don’t worry,” Brainy Brian says, giggling at his dear friend’s timidity. “Leave it to me. I’ll get you all the information you need so we can make a rational, considered decision.”
At which point, Barney Kay shrugs and says, “Well, you know me. I’m a dope when it comes to technology, the Internet, et cetera. In fact, I’m proud of my ignorance!”
“Hah,” says Brainy Brian. “You’re lucky you have me as a partner. My knowledge of the topic is second only to that
Gates guy, and he only knows about a few more details that I consider extraneous.”
The preceding conversation has taken place, in one form or another, at least a dozen times since early last fall. Since then, Brainy Brian has immersed himself in the world of web sites. He’s even written up a glossary for Barney Kay so the two can chatter in geek language.
Here’s an example of one such conversation:
Brainy Brian: “Let’s look for a company that offers 10 or 15 gigabytes of disk space and guarantees 99.9 percent uptime.”
Barney Kay: “What’s disk space?”
“Jesus Christ! I sent you the glossary. Didn’t you read it?”
“Yeah, I read it, but I don’t remember disk space.”
Brainy Brian again explains disk space.
“Okay, got it,” says Barney Kay. “Now, what’s uptime?”
“Aaaaarrrggghhh!”
So, Brainy Brian returns to his lonely task of finding the perfect web host for the pair’s new web site. He reads countless web host reviews. He thumbs through
Wired and
PCWorld at the
Barnes & Noble magazine rack. He visits every conceivable web host’s site, comparing prices, features and options.
Brainy Brian has contemplated MySQL, POP3/IMAP/STMP, Box Trappers, Coppermines, PHP-Nukes, Mambo and Joomia, Zen Carts, Apache Watchdogs, Pythons, PERL 5, CGI-BIN, AWStats, SSI, SSH, and ASP.NET AJAX.
Brainy Brian has also mulled the attributes of Red Hat ES Linux 4 OS, RAIF functionality, the EXTJS control panel and Putty. When he encountered this last feature, Brainy Brian sat back in his chair and let out a mighty sigh. He shook the cobwebs out of his head and yelled:
“WHAT IN GOD’S HOLY FUCKING NAME ARE THESE PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT!”
As the cats ran for cover, Brainy Brian banged his head against the dining room wall. Then he went into the den and banged his head against three of the walls in that room. Finally, he collapsed into his bed and cried himself to sleep.
If any of you can guess who these two fellows are, please don’t tell Barney Kay what Brainy Brian has been going through. See, Brainy Brian has sent Barney Kay a monograph explaining precisely why they should choose a certain company to be their web host. It’s chock full of all the aforementioned arcana. When Barney Kay reads it, he’ll think that Brainy Brian has made a momentous choice based on all the available information at hand. It is the model of a rational, considered decision. Now, Barney Kay and Brainy Brian’s web site can be up within days.
Try as he might, though, Brainy Brian has no more familiarity with MySQL than he does with the inner workings of the
Illuminati. He made his web host choice based on Barney Kay’s offhand mention that that is the company his track coach friend uses for
his successful web site. Brainy Brian secretly hopes Barney Kay’s college-student daughter approves.
—by Milo Samardzija on May 19th, 2009
A long time ago I discovered that a married man has to keep some things to himself. For example, I never tell my wife about my affairs, gambling debts, opium habit, prison record, or the child support payments I’ve been making for the past 30 years. Its not that she wouldn’t be totally supportive, you understand, its simply a matter of not wanting to worry her needlessly.
For the last six weeks, however, I’ve been keeping a secret from her and it’s been eating away at me.
If you recall, I recently enrolled in the
VA hospital health care system. One of the first things they wanted me to do was take a physical. I thought it was a good idea. I haven’t had a physical in years, which is stupid, considering my somewhat advanced age.
They put me through a battery of tests – blood, x-rays – the usual shit. The doctor told me that I seemed to be in pretty good shape, considering that I’m a smoker, drinker and eater of red meat. He’d have to wait until the test results came back, however, before he was prepared to give me a clean bill of health. I made an appointment to see him again the following week.
When I met with the doctor again, he had a grim look on his face. He had one of my x-rays on his desk. He held it up, pointed to it and said, “It looks like you’ve got an
enlarged heart.”
I think I can speak for most people when I say that the last things you want to hear from your doctor are the words cancer and anything having to do with the heart.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, nervously.
“I can’t tell until we do a couple of more tests. But if it’s an enlarged heart it’s not good.”
We made an appointment for six weeks later for more extensive testing.
When I left the VA hospital, I decided not to tell my wife about my possible enlarged heart. She’s a worrier and right now there’s a lot of stress in our lives. I didn’t want to add another layer on the shitcake. Besides, I wouldn’t know for sure whether I did, indeed, have a heart problem for another six weeks. I decided that the only person that should be worried during that time period was me.
It was a long six weeks. I tried to carry on normally, but my family sensed something was amiss. One day my wife said, “The girls think there’s something wrong with you.”
“Why would they say that?”
“Because you’re acting weird.”
“Shit, honey, I’m a weird guy.”
“Yeah, but you’re acting weirder than usual.”
“Heh, heh, I’ll have a talk with them later.”
I’ll admit I was nervous when I went back to the VA hospital for the additional testing. I’ve always taken my health for granted. I come from hearty peasant stock. I figured I was like
Keith Richards, someone who defied the laws of nature. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe my time was up. Maybe I had just made a down payment on 40 acres. Maybe I was on my way to
Graceland and didn’t even know it. All sorts of odd thoughts went through my mind, the majority of them gloomy.
I went through a whole series of tests. One of them was, I think, called an
echocardiogram. It involved me lying flat on some sort of conveyor belt while I was slowly fed through a contraption that looked like an iron lung on steriods. All in all, I spent about two hours at the hospital, being poked, prodded, bled, x-rayed and
magnetically imaged.
“I’ll let you know the results as soon as they come in,” the doctor told me.
The doctor called the next morning. “I’ve got good news for you,” he said. “You don’t have an enlarged heart. You have an enlarged artery and that’s not really anything to worry about.”
As soon as I got off the phone, I told my wife the whole story. She looked at me in disbelief.
“You ASSHOLE! Why didn’t you tell me right away?”
“I didn’t want you to worry. Besides, I wanted to know for sure if there was a problem.”
“So, that why you’ve been acting like an idiot for the last few weeks.”
“I thought I was acting normal.”
“No you weren’t. You’ve been moping around like a 10-year-old. Plus you’ve been drinking way too much.”
“Honey I was a little out of sorts. A little
wine helped me sleep better.”
“No it didn’t. The wine just made you
drunk.”
“Well, yes, that too.”
“Promise me you’ll never keep secrets like that from me again.”
“Sure thing, honey. Whatever you say.”
“Liar.”
Milo Samardzija’s great American novel, “Schoolboy,” is on sale now. If you haven’t bought a copy yet you are a cheap illiterate. Is that how you want people to think of you? – The Eds.
—by Benny Jay on May 18th, 2009
I’m sitting at a table on the corner outside Starbuck’s — my dog at my feet — drinking my coffee and reading my book, a Graham Greene novel about an English double-agent.
I’m enjoying the moment. The sky’s blue — the day warm, but not hot. The plots got me hooked. I’m eagerly turning the pages — something big and bad’s about to pop.
My cell phone rings. It’s my mother.
“Did you see the story about the lady who raises gorillas?” she asks.
“No….”
“She raises gorillas in her front yard. Who raises gorillas?”
“I didn’t see it….”
“It’s in the paper….”
“I haven’t seen the paper yet?”
“You haven’t read the paper? It’s almost noon and you haven’t read the paper — did you just get up?”
“I’ve been reading a book….”
“I’m about to eat lunch and you haven’t read the paper….”
I sip my coffee. This could be awhile.
“She went to your college….”
“Who?”
“The lady who raises the gorillas….”
“Oh….”
“It says she’s two years older than you, so you would have been there where she was there. Did you know her?”
“What’s her name?”
“I can’t remember….”
“How do I know if I know her if I don’t know her name?”
“Well, she went to your college….”
Pause. I’m not sure what I can say.
The phone beeps. “I got another call coming in — hold on.” I put her on hold to take a call from Merlin, the computer wizard, who tells me he’s coming by to fix my computer. I come back to my mother and I catch her mid-sentence. I don’t think she realizes I put her on hold.
“She keeps the gorillas in her front yard. Can you imagine liking gorillas so much you raise them?”
“No….”
“She said she used to go to Milwaukee and visit the zoo. Ever go to Milwaukee?”
“Yes….”
“I can’t imagine anything worth seeing in Milwaukee….”
I fight off the urge to defend Milwaukee. My phone beeps. “Hold on.” I put her on hold to take a call from my oldest daughter who tells me she and my wife will be home soon.
I come back to my mother who, again, not aware that she was on hold, has moved on to another subject — the Preakness horse race.
“The filly won….”
“Yes, Rachel Alexandra….”
“A filly is a girl horse….”
“I know….”
“A gelding is a horse that’s fixed….”
“Right….”
“A colt is a male horse — did you know that?”
“Yes….”
“You didn’t know that….”
“I did know that….”
“I’m just tweaking you….”
A lady walks by with a dachshund. My dog, who had been resting, rushes out from under the table. My coffee spills. No more left. I think about buying a new one. But, nah, Merlin’s on his way. Time to get home.
I gather my stuff and cross the street. Got the book and the leash in one hand and the cell phone in the other. My mother’s telling me about her friend’s illness. Guess I’ll read my book later….
