May 10th, 2009
It’s Daddy Dee who tells me about the concert at Martyrs. He says he’s singing with Tributosaurus, this cover band that sings the songs of the legends, and on this particular night they’re singing War.
For a minute I think I’m not going cause it’s raining, number one; and, number two, I don’t want to play the part of the old timer gathering with other old timers to sing old songs from the past.
But forget that. I am old — no use sitting at home about it. And I love War. Always have. Always will. Plus, my wife got me this new umbrella — cherry red and everything — which covers up the whole sidewalk, it’s so big.
So my wife and I go. And they knock us out. There must be ten guys in the band, including a horn section, a keyboardist, a bass player, a drummer and a percussionist. One of the singers is a big feller named Matt Spiegel, who’s deceptively nimble. Moves like a cat. Reminds me of Nathan Lane. And he’s got almost operatic range — he really sounds like the singer in War. The trumpet player is, of all people, Mike Cichowicz, who happens to be the older brother of The Tit, the kid who snuck me into see “The Godfather” about, oh, two billion light years ago. And the coolest of the cool is the guitar player, who sits on his stool and barely blinks an eye. Daddy Dee calls him Big D, but I think of him as Baby Buddha cause he radiates a peaceful kind of mellow.
Daddy Dee and Matt are trading solos, singing every song in the book — “Spill the Wind,” “The World is a Ghetto,” “Why Can’t We Be Friends” and so on. I’m on the dance floor, not so much dancing as tapping my umbrella to the beat. Got a couple of beer-bellied old timers in Hawaiian shirts standing behind me. They know every word and they’re singing along, bringing back phrases I haven’t thought about in years: “Let’s have a picnic go to the park, rollin’ in the grass `til long after dark….”
The band does an off-the-charts version of “Slippin’ Into Darkness.” In my mind, it’s the summer of `78 and we’re down by the boathouse on the North Avenue beach around midnight. Some one’s passing the wine and the weed — must be two dozen people crowded around a boom box that’s playing this song. A police car cruises up and everyone scatters cause it’s after curfew. I run all the way to Fullerton and double back after the police car’s gone. Every one’s returned. Got the song playing right where we left it — “Slippin’ into darkness, takes my mind beyond the trees.” Didn’t miss a beat….
The band moves into “Summer,” one of my all-time all times. Now I’m singing with the boys in the Hawaiian shirts: “Ridin’ round town with all the windows down, eight track playin’ all your fav’rit songs….”
The concert ends and we head outside, walking down Lincoln Avenue in the dead of night. Rain’s stopped. Clouds gone. Seems warmer. I take off my jacket. A cool breeze strokes my arm. I’m tapping my umbrella against the ground like it’s a cane. Feeling all sprightly — like Fred Astaire. Summer’s coming. I can feel it. Gonna ride my bike up and down the lakefront. Check out the outdoor concerts in Grant Park. Dance under the stars `n everything. From the corner of my mind the refrain returns: “Yes, it’s summer, summer time is here/yes, it’s summer, my time of year….”
May 9th, 2009
Jon Randolph is alive! Randolph Street is a day late but well worth the wait. Chicago’s finest photojournalist tells the tale of today’s pix in his own words. Take it away Jon. – The Eds.
I took these photos in September, 1975, when I was working for
WTTW Channel 11 in Chicago. I’d loved
Dylan since the
Freewheelin’ album was released in May, 1963. It was a dream come true that he was scheduled to appear on
Soundstage for a tribute to
John Hammond….
continued below pix
continued from above pix
I’m not sure Dylan was even the biggest star of the show – after all, Hammond had played a key role in the careers of
Marion Williams,
Helen Humes,
Benny Goodman,
Teddy Wilson,
George Benson,
Red Norvo,
Philly Joe Jones,
Milt Hinton, and even
John Hammond, Jr.With
Scarlet Rivera playing violin, Dylan sang “
Hurricane,” “
Simple Twist of Fate,” and “
Oh, Sister.” It was well after midnight when Dylan finished his set. I was standing next to a young hipster record producer when he said to his pal, “He’s still got it. Goddamn, I thought he was through.”
Amen.
May 8th, 2009
Visual and spoken word artists have joined forces for an exhibit on
depression (the skull-jockey variety, not the economic kind) in the
Dole Gallery at the
Lakeside Legacy Arts Park in
Crystal Lake, Illinois. The show, “
Snap Out Of It… Don’t You Hate It When They Say That?” which runs through May 15th, features deeply personal ruminations on the illness, which some 20 million Americans grapple with.
May is
Mental Health Month in
McHenry County. Lakeside Legacy Arts Park this month also features “
Voice – Adolescent Allies,” in the
Sage Gallery, featuring works by teens exploring relationship power dynamics and sexual violence.
Here are images of some of the works from “Snap Out Of It.”
“Social Phobia,” acrylic on canvas, 2009,
by Sophia Anastasiou-Wasik
“I Would If I Could,” computer graphics, 2009,
by Karen Roszkowski
“Addiction” (left) and “Obsession,” both mixed media on Masonite, 2009, by Sophia Anastasiou-Wasik
“I’m Falling,” prose poem performance, 2009, by Michael G. Glab
In case you’re looking for this week’s installment of Randolph Street, photojournalist Jon Randolph is missing in action today. To the best of our knowledge, he had pressing social and convivial responsibilities last night which kept him from his cozy bed until the wee hours. We trust he has an ample supply of aspirin on hand for when he greets the day.
Check in with us tomorrow. Hopefully, good old Jon will have rejoined the living by then. Come to The Third City every day for top-notch writing and terrific pictures.
May 7th, 2009
As I mentioned in a few earlier posts, I am a veteran of the
war in Vietnam. It was an ugly meat grinder of a war, fought for the
wrong reasons, against the
wrong people, and, predictably, it all went
terribly wrong. I’m not smart enough to explain the the political, ethical or fiduciary reasons for the war, I’d just like to relate a few odd incidents that you might find interesting.
Incident #1
We had a 2nd Lieutenant, let’s call him
Lt. Smith, who served as my platoon leader for several months. He seemed to be a nice enough guy, considerate of his men, easy to talk to and not too eager to cover himself in glory. He was an educated man, with a degree from the
University of Pennsylvania, and when we had some downtime he would usually spend it reading paperback books. He seemed like a completely normal guy.
If Lt. Smith had a quirk it was that he was madly in love with his college girlfriend. Whenever I talked to him the discussion would invariably turn to the love of his life. He carried a photo album of her and would whip it out at the slightest sign of interest. The photos depicted an attractive young woman in a variety of settings, on campus, at the beach, on the ski slopes.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Lt. Smith would always ask me, after showing me her latest pictures.
“Yeah, she’s a real looker.”
“We’re going to get married when I get back to the world.”
“That’s great, sir.”
“We were going to get married before I came in-country, but I thought it best we wait, just in case.”
“That’s real sound thinking, sir.”
One day Lt. Smith got a letter from his beloved, which contained a couple of more photos and mentioned that she and a few girlfriends were going to spend the weekend in upstate
New York attending an outdoor music festival. As it turned out, the festival was
Woodstock.
Just to remind those of you whose memories are shot, whose brain cells are fried, or who are in the early stages of
Alzheimer’s, Woodstock was the blow-out party of the
20th Century. It was a life-changing event for many people, changing their attitudes, redefining their reasons for existence and altering the trajectory of their lives. Apparently, Lt. Smith’s girlfriend was one of the people who went to Woodstock and never looked back. Lt. Smith, who used to get a letter from his girlfriend every other day, never heard from her again, at least while he was in Vietnam. I doubt I’ve ever seen a sadder or more forlorn man.
Incident #2
Packages from home were always a welcome treat. We called them “Care Packages” and they usually came from parents, grandparents, wives or girlfriends. The packages contained everything from homemade cookies to bottles of whiskey, porn magazines to editions of hometown newspapers.
My father once sent me a wicked-looking
Buck knife with a fine leather sheath. I lost it a couple of months after it arrived.
There was a guy – let’s call him
Freaky Joe - who received a package from his girlfriend that contained a
DayGlo paint set. Readers of a certain age will remember that DayGlo paints were all the rage for a time, especially with the
psychedelic set. The paints glowed in the dark and were used for decorating t-shirts, making posters and face painting. I knew a guy in college who liked to get stoned, use Day-Glo paint to paint all of his teeth different colors and then go out at night and smile at people.
Anyway, Freaky Joe spent one afternoon smoking reefer and painting a
Claymore mine with his newly-arrived paint set. A Claymore mine is a plastic shell filled with
C-4 explosives and packed with hundreds of BBs or ball bearings. It was attached to a 50-yard-long cord that had a manually activated detonating device at its terminus. When the device was set off, the Claymore exploded with devastating power, shredding everything in its range.
Freaky Joe was sitting with a goofy smile on his face, a Claymore in his lap, painting stars, half moons, polka dots and stick figures all over the mine’s outer shell. When asked what he was doing, Freaky Joe replied, “Just fucking around.”
That night Freaky Joe’s squad went out on night ambush. This was an exercise where a squad of eight men went out in the evening and set up an ambush along a well-traveled trail. Anybody who came walking by was in trouble. To be fair, the other side did the same thing.
Freaky Joe had his own idea of how to run a night ambush. He hung the painted Claymore mine in a tree, about head high. Then he went off about 40 yards, found a good place to hide, and , using his night vision goggles, waited for some poor soul to come by.
A while later, a lone Vietnamese came strolling along. He might have been an
NVA regular, a
Viet Cong or just a luckless farmer. The man saw something odd hanging in a tree, something unexplainable. It was a group of stars, half moons, stripes and stick figures, all twinkling and glowing in the dark. His curiosity obviously piqued, the man walked up to the glowing vision and pressed his face close to see what it was. At that point Freaky Joe activated the Claymore and blew the man’s head off.
“Curiosity killed the gook,” Freaky Joe said. The boys got a lot of laughs out of that one.
Incident #3
Every couple of months my company would be taken out of the field and taken back to
Division Headquarters in
Chu Lai for three days of rest and relaxation that was known as “
standdown.” There was plenty of relaxation but very little rest. It was basically a three-day beer bust, with lots of reefer and opium to grease the skids.
One of the best things about standdown was that Division HQ provided live entertainment, in the form of rock, country or R&B bands. The bands were generally from Australia, South Korea or the Philippines. I don’t remember if they were any good, but they were always fronted by attractive female singers.
One of the rumors going around was that these singers also doubled as whores. We had just finished watching a performance by an Australian group that featured three very good looking singers. They played mostly Motown stuff and did a credible imitation of the Supremes. When the show was over, I huddled with a guy named Duffy and a 2nd Lieutenant, whom I’ll call Bruce Diksas to spare him any undue embarrassment. We decided to take a shot at the the Aussie Supremes.
Lt. Diksas, being an officer and a gentleman, was able to commandeer the company
jeep. Then he, Duffy and I went in search of the women.
“Oh, man, round-eyed women.”
“Yeah, and two of them are blondes.”
“Shit, man, I haven’t seen a blonde in eight months.”
“Did you bring the weed?”
“Brought a bottle, too.”
“Oh, man, this is gonna be great.”
“Fucking blondes, can you believe it?”
We finally located the entertainers’ compound. It was a heavily guarded area of
Airstream trailers enclosed by barbed wire. The only reason we were able to get inside was that Lt. Diksas pulled rank, telling the MP at the gate that we in search of an AWOL and had information that he might be in the area.
When we located the Aussie Supremes’ manager, a greasy looking guy who resembled a debauched
Oliver Reed, we made our offer.
“We’ll give you a hundred and fifty dollars each for the three girls for the night.”
The manager lit a cigarette – I remember it was a
Salem - and considered our offer. He pursed his lips, rocked his head from side to side, squinted his eyes, and then finally broke our hearts.
“I’m sorry, lads. That’s a nice offer, but the girls are playing the
Field Grade Officers Club this evening and I’m sure we’ll get a better deal.”
May 6th, 2009
Ah, back in good old Louisville, where the magnolias are deep green, the grass awns wave blue in the breeze, and my nasal passages are packed with concrete, thanks to all the Ohio Valley allergens fighting to get a crack at me.
As for the good, well, there are my pals
Sophia and
Danny and their two kids,
Arianna and
Matty, with whom
The Loved One and I stayed,
Benny Jay and
Milo, of course,
Chinatown and
Ricobene’s pizza joint on 26th Street, and
Wrigley Field – which I always drive circles around when I visit. The ballpark looks gorgeous, even with the
commercialization of the bleacher entrance (good god, the Cubs have essentially sold naming rights to a
doorway – what’s next, the
Michelob Pale Ale Urinals? The
Vagisil Medicated Anti-Itch Ladies Room?)
I love Chicago and I hate it. I suppose that puts me in the good company of some 2,896,016 people (according to the
latest official census.) A dozen or so of those citizens were gathered at the access road away from
McCormick Place Monday afternoon as The Loved One and I drove past, giving us a remarkable send-off. I mean, I assume they were Chicagoans but, then again, given the reason for their jarring presence, they might well have been from distant points on the American map (as well as the American psyche.)
Our plan was to begin the long drive back to
Kentucky as soon as her Monday convention session was finished. The
Prius was packed with all our luggage, as well as a sizable Ricobene’s pizza – much of which we demolished by the time we got to
Indianapolis. The sun shone, the temperature hovered around 70, the Cubs were in the midst of a
four-game winning streak – what could tarnish the mood?
How about a seemingly endless string of enormous, full-color placards of human fetuses in various states of destruction? There were images of half skulls, bloody limbs, gooey guts, and all the rest of the emotional pornography that anti-abortionists wallow in. The
dubiously self-described “right-to-lifers” had chosen this spot to attempt to shock us into agreeing with their
selective love-of-humanity philosophy, figuring, I’m sure, that at least some of the conventioneering doctors have performed an
abortion or two.
Fair enough. I love being an American and support the right of anyone to carry a placard, even if it
compares Barack Obama to
Adolf Hitler or
posits that
George W. Bush and his boys engineered the
9/11 attacks. Lunatics have as much right to shout from the rooftops as I do. Only I don’t shout from rooftops nor do I much care to tote a picture of a fetus’s severed arm.
The jerks.
May 5th, 2009
It’s dentist day. Damn. I hate everything about it. Can’t stand sitting in the chair with the teeth cleaner hovering over me. Can’t stand the sound of the drill. Can’t stand the scratchy sound the scalpel makes when it scrapes across my teeth….
Plus, it’s raining. Got wet running from the car. Sitting in the lobby reading an old copy of The New Yorker. Must be from March. I hear a drill in the distance. I feel a headache coming on….
I hear my name. I look up. It’s Tony! The world’s greatest teeth cleaner. He leads me to the chair and already I’m feeling brighter. Haven’t had him in years. Forgot he even worked here.
He’s not like most teeth cleaners who don’t say anything until your mouth’s open wide and then they ask you a question. Like they really care about what you have to say even though they know you can’t possibly say anything intelligent with your mouth open wide. Is this passive aggressive or what?
But Tony doesn’t ask questions. He talks. He’s this gay guy from a small-town in Michigan and he has a sixth sense for the inconsistencies in life — like how we say one thing and do something else. It’s like having a stand-up comic chatting away while he cleans your teeth. Not a Rodney Dangerfield comic, more like a Jerry Seinfeld. You know, situational humor….
“I used to have a dog, but I gave her away….”
“Why?” Only it comes out “ahy” cause my mouth is open.
“She hated me….”
“Ril-ly?”
“I never heard of a dog who hates its owner. Usually, they love whoever feeds them, right? But this dog hated me. She used to leave the room when I came in. She would sit on the other end of the couch when I was watching TV. I could have grown beef jerky for armpit hair and she still would have hated me….”
“Goo’ wah…..”
“The funny thing is — she loves the people I gave her to. They call me up, `oh, she’s the sweetest little dog. Cuddles with us at night.’ She never cuddled with me. She wouldn’t even get in bed with me….”
I spit. He starts talking about his family — not sure how the topic comes up. He has two brothers in the Army. Both overseas — Iraq, Afghanistan. For awhile one of his brother was stationed in Kuwait: “I sent him a guide book — things to do in Kuwait. Art museums to go to, restaurants to eat at. He calls me, `Tony, I’m not on vacation — this is war.’ I’m like — `well, you still have to eat…..’”
He turns on the drill:”I’m the only boy in my family who didn’t join the military. My father was a Marine. He used to wake me up early. `Get out of bed, soldier.’ I mean — soldier? Good God, I’m like 12 and he’s calling me soldier. If I did something wrong, he’d make me rake the leaves. `You’re gonna rake the leaves until I’m tired.’ I was so literal minded. I’m thinking — `how can that be? I’m raking the leaves — not him.’”
He turns off the drill: “When I was 17, I told my father I wasn’t going to the military. It devastated him. But there was no way — just no way — I was going to the Army or the Marines. Especially the Marines….”
“Is he still in the Marines?”
“No. He left the Marines and became a computer programmer. He works at a hospital. He’s big time in the union….”
“So he’s a Democrat?”
“Are you kidding me? He voted for McCain. I’m like — hello! You’re in a union. You work in a hospital. Why are you a Republican? It’s all that Marine in him. He’s incapable of being a Democrat. He still can’t pronounce Obama‘s name. He calls him Obamba — like the song. Does this make sense? None of this makes sense. But since when did life make sense….”
May 4th, 2009
I’ve been chewing my fingernails for the last hour and a half. Jeez, I’d better watch out or I’ll draw blood. I’m tense, edgy. The guy driving the black BMW in front of me is going about 12 miles an hour, leaning over and checking addresses. I honk. He turns around and flips me the digit. I pull around him to pass and yell, “Get the hell outta my way!”
As I pass, I see him shouting a response. Most of the words begin with an F.
I’m back in Chicago.
The reason for all my nail-chewing and overall angst is the city’s unbearable traffic. I’ve been in Louisville more than two years now and people down there consider five cars stopped at a red light to be a traffic jam. I don’t know how I survived 50 years in Chicago with my sanity intact.
I’m heading over to Benny Jay‘s estate, hard by Lincoln Square, a hop, skip and a jump from Wrigley Field. How long has it been since I laid eyes on my literary colleague and business partner? It becomes obvious the first time we see each other as Benny answers the door. He shushes the dog and wrestles with the front door lock. My technologically challenged old pal. He’s stuck – the lock has baffled him. He literally has to run out the back door, around the house via the gangway, and out to the front to greet me.
We seem to freeze for an almost imperceptible moment, assessing each other after we hug. There’s a hell of a lot more gray on both our heads, some three or four more belt notches around my waist, and -believe it or not – a good decade of living separating this moment from the last time we saw each other.
“Honestly,” Benny asks, “how long has it been?
I ponder a moment. Then it hits me. I remember that memorable early October evening when we watched the festivities on TV in the Irving Park Road bowling alley after Rod “The Shooter” Beck had snuffed out Dusty Baker‘s San Francisco Giants, vaulting the Sammy Sosa Cubs into the 1998 playoffs. As Sammy himself body-surfed over thousands of delirious bleacherites, some now-forgotten glamorous TV reporter shoved her microphone into the faces of blotto revelers and asked, “How do you feel?”
Some nameless bowling alley employee turned to Benny and me and shouted, as if it were he she was pumping for a sound bite, “Nice tits, bitch!”
Benny and I doubled over in laughter even though we we’re both smart enough to be disgusted by his ridiculous, benighted, antediluvian outlook toward women. Why? Who knows? Maybe we were giddy over the Cubs’ rare success. Maybe we felt we were suddenly 12 again, giggling over some classmate’s use of dirty words.
Whatever. I’m sure we’d seen each other since then but that episode will do for now.
Benny shows me a recent picture of his daughters, who, if I recall correctly, had spaghetti sauce and jelly stains, respectively, on their T-shirts the last time I saw them. They are now grown women. Ouch! What does that make me? The living dead?
Milo calls. “Glab’s here!” Benny shouts into the phone. “He’s in town! He just dropped in!” And, like that, Milo hops into his car to join us.
Handshakes and hugs abound. Three old goats stand around staring at the ravages of time on each other in Benny’s cramped office garret. Before we know it, we settle down to discuss the things that really matter to such venerable figures.
“My doctor says I’m doing good,” Milo says. “Blood pressure’s good. My weight’s good.” (At which point I think, The bastard.) “All in all, not bad for a geezer.”
I congratulate him on his good fortune.
“But, he did say my kidneys are a little iffy,” Milo adds.
Uh oh.
“Yeah, I had kidney stones and they left some scarring.”
At this very moment, Benny lopes up the stairs. He’d been downstairs taking a phone call.
“Whaddya guys talkin’ about?” he says with the air of a 12-year-old expecting to jump into a chat about the Cubs or the Bulls or the Monkees.
We ain’t 12 anymore. Kidney stones, we inform him.
“Oh yeah, I had ‘em,” Benny crows, almost like a 12 year-old bragging that he’s kissed a girl. “I never felt such pain! I remember, it was 2003. I was coaching my daughter’s baseball team. It hurt so bad I was nauseated. After the game, I was walking home through River Park and I had to stop to throw up. One of the kids was passing by as I’m bent over and I’m thinking, ‘Oh great! What’s this kid gonna tell her parents?’”
Milo and I agree that the kid’ll probably grow up to be an eminent blogger. One of her posts will be about the time she saw her drunken old baseball coach puking his guts up in the park after a game.
We laugh. Deep, basso, raspy laughs. Milo coughs a bit. I try to catch my breath. Benny says, smiling sagely, “Ah, these kids!”
It’s good to be home.
