Big Mike: A Nation Caught Without Its Pants On

I had one of those beautiful brain fart moments this morning. I was sitting in the hotel lobby, draining my first cup of medicinal java and deciding it was time for a second dose. So, I stood up to head to the urn. At that precise moment, I had a chilling flash — I’d forgotten to put my pants on!

Swear to god. The boys felt as though they were dangling in the breeze. I felt a draft on my behind. All the other guests whipped their heads around to gawk at me. I wanted to dive out the plate glass window into the pool.

Only I was wrong. I had indeed hitched up my drawers before leaving the room. Phew.

I have to confess, I have this same terror at some point every morning. Guaranteed, no matter what I’m doing — heading to Barnes & Noble, a meeting, or even to the backyard to mow the lawn — the hair on my arms stands on end and I panic that I’ve forgotten to put my pants on. Every single goddamned morning. Must be some weird obsessive, compulsive symptom. I’ll have to ask my shrink about it — it’ll be number 73 on my list of symptoms, questions and pleadings, but I’ll get to it eventually.

Today’s episode was so realistic that it caught me by surprise. I suppose I’m feeling particularly insecure and up in the air due to our current living situation — living out of a suitcase with the cats at a Hampton Inn hard by the Indiana University football stadium. I went on and on about the situation in my post the other day so I won’t belabor things here.

Except for this: the worst thing about it is that I’m forced to listen to Fox News on the lobby TV as I partake of my morning bracer. Jesus Christ, these people are from another planet! Here are today’s most important stories, according to the brain trust at Fox:

~ A man was sent to prison for forcing an eighteen-month old girl to inhale marijuana smoke;
~ Customers are leaving Bank of America in droves because a branch manager misinterpreted some corporate policy and wouldn’t allow the American flag to be displayed during a memorial for a soldier killed in Iraq (or Afghanistan, I forget which);
~ A daredevil was shot out of a cannon at a circus and he missed the net, breaking several bones.

Today’s special guest on the morning show was Miss America. I didn’t even know there still was a Miss America. And — again, my hand to god — every other commercial is for boner pills or dick extenders.

Fox News is the highest-rated of all the 24-hour news whores on cable TV. Think of it — an enormous swath of the American populace sees the world as as a place where people are forcing tots to smoke pot, banks are pissing on the American flag, and men being shot out of cannons and Miss America are still cultural touchstones. Add to these concerns the fact that the men all have limp dicks while their wives are gritting their teeth and you have one edgy gang.

No wonder so many people are freaked out of their minds that we now have a (half) black president. More from America’s heartland next time.

Benny Jay: In Cheap We Trust

It’s the middle of the night and I can’t sleep — must have been something I ate — so I’m sitting on the downstairs sofa reading “In Cheap We Trust” by a journalist named Lauren Weber.

It’s all about our need to be more frugal, so we don’t, you know, destroy the world by using everything up.

She’s got a pretty convincing argument, but I just wish she used a different word in her title. To me, cheap and frugal are not quite the same. Frugality is a virtue — waste not, want not, that kind of thing. But cheap is a form of selfishness.

Put it this way: Most cheap guys I know — and I’ve known way too many of them — aren’t cheap cause they want to save the planet. Ah, hell, no — they’re cheap cause they don’t want to pay the bill.

Take Jamie, for example.  Cheapest dude I know. The next bill he picks up will be his first. When we go out to eat, he scours the menu looking for the least expensive thing he can buy — maybe a salad. You ask, “Jamie, why aren’t you eating?” And he  says, “I’m not really that hungry.”

But tell him you’re treating? Man, you never saw a guy get so ravenous so fast. Next thing you know he’s ordering the steak. Maybe an appetizer. How `bout the soup? Probably finish it off with a piece of pie.

This guy’s so cheap, I once saw him risk serious injury to avoid paying twenty-five cents. Here’s how: He was driving north on Damen and he pulled over to park at a meter. This all occurred, by the way, as I happened to be walking up the road.

So, anyway, just as he’s about to parallel park, he notices a car pulling out of a spot behind him with time left on the meter. He pops his car into reverse and backs up. Almost backs up into an oncoming bus. All to save a quarter! Got out of the car with the biggest smile on his face, like it was the happiest day of his life.

Another notorious tightwad I knew in my college days — call him Bill — was so cheap, he wouldn’t order coffee when we’d go out to eat breakfast. Instead, he’d wait until I had a cup or two and then he say, “hey, man, can you ask the waitress for a refill?”

“What?”

“Yeah, man, I wanna cup….”

“But I have a cold….”

“I’ll take my chances….”

Okay, so I made up the  bit about having a cold. But when the check came, he went over it like an eagle-eyed accountant, making sure I got stuck with the full cost of the coffee. Cause, technically, he had not ordered it. Now that, my friends, is so cheap, it’s cheaper than cheap.

I’ve told my mom that story at least a dozen times. She never gets tired of hearing it. She loves trashing cheapskates. It’s one of our favorite past times. It annoys the hell out of my father. I’ll tell her a story about, say, Jamie, and she’ll say: “Davy, you have to hear this….”

And he’ll say: “Don’t you people have anything better to occupy your minds?”

My father’s really big on how we occupy our minds.

The funny thing is Lauren Weber would love my parents. As children of the Great Depression, they understand the need for frugality cause they remember when there was barely enough food to eat — you’d better not leave any chicken meat on the bone when they’re around.

But are they cheap? Just the opposite. When the bill comes, my father’s quick like a cat — grabs it right out of the waiter’s hand. The man doesn’t have a cheap bone in his body.

My sister on the other hand? Well, the last time we all went out for lunch, she grabs the bill before my father can get to it, looks at me and says, “C’mon, our treat.” You know, like she’s the big sport.

So I get out my Master Card and she gets out her American Express and, well, you can imagine what happens next. The waitress says, “sorry, we don’t take American Express.”

My sister looks at me with this little sheepish smile. Oops, turns out it’s her only credit card and she has no cash. “If you want, I can go find an ATM,” she tells me.

I wind up paying the whole bill. Now, I wouldn’t say she’s cheap. Just sorta slick….

Anyway, this is the stuff running through my mind as I sit on the couch in the dead of the night reading that new book by Lauren Weber.

At about six in the morning I get a little sleepy and pad off to bed. I’m just drifting off, when I remember: I owe Big Jon Randolph sixty-something dollars for that Dylan ticket.

Damn. I hop out of bed and write him a check. I’d  rather lose sleep than have him think I’m cheap….

Big Mike: The Husband (Or Wife) Is Always The Prime Suspect

And so the farewell tour has concluded. Yesterday, The Loved One and I bade adieu to King Louis XVI’s eponymous town. As we drove toward the JFK Bridge over the Ohio River, I made a confession to my mate.

Me: “Honey, can I tell you something?”

The Loved One (beginning to panic): “What? What did we forget? What’s wrong?”

“No, no. Nothing’s wrong. I just wanna say something about Louisville.”

“You’re gonna miss it. I knew it. I shouldn’t have taken the job in Bloomington. I messed up your life.”

“No, no. Will you listen! Sheesh. I just wanna say this about Louisville — I can take it or leave it.”

“Really? I had no idea. I thought you loved it. That’s what you said.”

“Yeah, I know, but I was just being a good soldier. I didn’t hate it or anything. There’s just nothing to recommend the place. Well, nice people, sure. Good neighbors and all that. But, man, no good restaurants, no cultural institutions. Downtown is a ghost town. Blech.”

With that we ascended the JFK and eyed the distant vista of southern Indiana. New home here we come!

Careful readers will note the hair-trigger tone of tension in The Loved One’s voice. We’d just spent the last month bundling, boxing, crating, and stacking up every single thing we own for transport to new city. Only our home for the next two weeks will be a hotel room not much bigger than our former master bedroom. In it we’ll fit our clothes, toiletries, two cats, a litter box, a few things to read, our MacBooks, a stash of junk food, our dirty laundry, and ourselves. We should have brought a huge tin of oil — after all, if we’re gonna be sardines….

We ran an enormous truckful of our junk up to Bloomington Saturday, collapsed in our hotel beds and got up at an ongodly early hour yesterday to supervise the movers loading everything into a storage shed. Then we had to speed back to Louisville, clean the floors and refrigerator of the old house, load up the deck furniture and any odd boxes we’d forgotten on the first trip, and turn around to speed back to Bloomington. This dizzying pace has transformed every topic into a potential landmine.

For instance, yesterday morning I got up earlier than The Loved One and waited for her in the lobby, sipping my life-giving cup of joe. I waited and waited but The Loved One didn’t appear. So I took the elevator back up to the fourth floor, presumably to rattle her out of the bed. She wasn’t in the room so I headed back toward the lobby. I was waiting with another guest for the elevator when my cell phone rang. I answered it, forgetting I had it set on speaker mode. The following blared out of it:

“Michael! Where the hell are you? We’re late and you’re off gallivanting somewhere! I can never depend on….” I quickly flipped the phone shut. The guy next to me stared at me and mouthed the word Wow. It turns out that The Loved One and I had simply passed each other in separate elevators. It happens. But she wasn’t about to be so sanguine about the mix up for another hour or so.

Then this. Last night after a day of backaches, headaches, smashed thumbs, bruised shins and one episode of me nearly passing out from the heat and humidity, we finally got back to Bloomington at about 10:00pm to unload our deck furniture into another storage shed. We squeezed the last item in and closed the door. I pulled out a big padlock and tried to run the bolt through the hasp. Uh oh. The lock wouldn’t fit. Grrrr.

Me: “This goddamn thing! Just what I need. I’m too tired for this shit. Goddamn it!” All the while I was trying to force the bolt through the hasp.

The Loved One (amazingly calm): “Here, let me try.”

“Now what the hell are you gonna do that I can’t do? I know how to put a padlock on a hasp! Jesus Christ, you’d think I was mentally retarded….” And so on.

Somehow, some way, The Loved One kept her cool. “I have thinner fingers, maybe I can do it.”

“What? Now I’m too fat to put a padlock on a hasp? Perfect! Just what I need to hear….” and so on.

“Michael, come on. That isn’t it at all. Let me try.”

I threw my hands in the air. “Fine! You do it! Go ahead. This I want to see.” I stepped back and folded my arms across my chest. Naturally, she got the bolt through the hasp before I could tap my toe four times. She looked at me and I lost it. We laughed like overtired, babbling idiots.

Today, we woke up bright and early again. I drove The Loved One to work. As she got out of the car, she said, “Well, we did it. This is our new home — Bloomington.”

“Yep,” I replied. “And you know what the best part is?”

“What?”

“We didn’t kill each other.”

She smiled and nodded, knowingly.

Benny Jay: Fulfillingness’ First Finale

You’d never think that Stevie Wonder’s “Fulfillingness’ First Finale” was one of those records that makes me feel all zesty inside, cause the first time I heard it I was going through a miserable phase of existence.

I was a 19-year-old college sophomore, living in the freezing, god-forsaken tundra of northern Wisconsin, walking around with my head down feeling stupid and lost.

I was smoking too much weed, eating too much pizza and surrounded by too many white boys whose idea of great music was King Crimson. Say no more.

To keep my sanity, I listened to Stevie Wonder’s album — over and over and over again. “It Ain’t No Use,” “Please Don’t Go,” “Bird of Beauty,” “You Haven’t Done Nothing” — those songs were saviors.

Some of my classmates teased me about that record. This one dude down the hall sneered that Stevie Wonder’s lyrics were sophomoric. That was his word — thought he was really smart cause he used it. I asked him what he liked so much. And he told me Mott the Hoople.  I’ve had a grudge against that band ever since.

The good news is that I grew out of that self-conscious phase, but I never stopped loving Fulfillingness. I wore out my record and bought it on CD. One day not too long ago I was reading the liner notes and saw that Minnie Riperton sings back up on “It Ain’t No Use.”

I got all excited cause I love Minnie Riperton. Way back when, I had a crush on her. I thought she was the world’s most beautiful woman.  Whenever the radio played, “Lovin’ You,” I’d turn it up.  I particularly loved the part at the end where she starts chirping like a bird. In fact, I still make chirping sound whenever I hear that song.

Anyway, I put on “It Ain’t No Use.” And, yes, there she is. Minnie Riperton. Singing back up. In the part where the chorus goes: “Bye, bye, bye, bye.” My favorite part of the song.

In 1979, Minnie Riperton died of breast cancer.  She was so young — thirty-something years old — and so talented. I wish I’d known her. But, of course, I never will.

So Minnie Riperton’s just one more reason — as if I need any others — to love Fulfillingness’ First Finale.

But, wait, there’s more. Years pass. I get married. Have kids. They grow up. We’re watching “Saturday Night Live,” and we discover Maya Rudoph, this light-skinned comic who does hilarious imitations of everyone from Oprah to Barbra Streisand. We love her, especially my kids.  If I’m watching alone and she comes on, I yell up the stairs: “Hurry up — Maya Rudolph.” And my kids will come running down to watch. Over time, Maya Rudolph comes to symbolize the sound of my daughters laughing, one of the greatest sounds in the world.

Fast forward to early August — we drive up to Michigan to watch my cousin, Josh, in a play. And afterward we’re sitting around in a restaurant eating barbecue chicken — God, I love chicken. And Robert, Josh’s father, who’s knows absolutely everything about everything, asks if we have seen the movie, “Away We Go.”

No.

Robert says you gotta see it. Maya Rudolph’s great. She plays this girl — half-white/half-black — whose mother dies. Which is just like in real life cause Maya’s mother’s Minnie Riperton….

Hold it — Minnie Riperton’s Maya Rudolph’s mother?

You didn’t know that?

I thought I did but I wasn’t sure….

When I get home, I look it up on the computer and, sure enough, Robert’s right (and why, prey tell, do I ever doubt him?): Minnie Riperton is Maya Rudolph’s mother. In fact, Minnie is saying her name — Maya — as “Loving You” fades out.  At least, that’s what the article says.

Maya was seven-years-old when her mother died.

Following my cousin’s advice, my younger daughter and I see “Away We Go” at the 400 Theater over on Sheridan Road in Rogers Park. We see it the last day it’s playing, and there’s only two people in the theater — me and my daughter. Reminds me of the time I saw “Dirty Harry” back in 1972. But, I’ll save that for another day.

Anway, we love it. Once again, cousin Robert’s right — great flick….

Well, fast forward one more time — we’re driving across the state of Indiana. And I put on “Fulfillingness’ First Finale.” And on comes the greatest song of all — “It Ain’t No Use.” And I’m going — that’s Maya Rudolph’s mother singing backup! And the kids are saying, shh — turn it up! Cause there are some songs that are so good you just have to hear them loud. So I crank up the car stereo and soon we’re all singing along — me, my wife and our kids.  Singing it loud. Joining in the chorus for those bye, bye — bye, bye byes….

What a great song!

I’m imagining what it was like in that studio the day Stevie Wonder recorded it. I wish I was there. Singing back up with the great Minnie Riperton. Alive forever on a song.

Letter From Milo: Franz Kafka and Waterfront Alice

I’m not 100% certain, but I think it was the great Franz Kafka who said, “Man, there’s always another layer on the shitcake.”

As if having heart surgery isn’t bad enough, now I’ve got something else to fret about. You see, before having heart surgery you have to have a dental examination. The purpose of the exam is to see if you have any oral infections, which can complicate the surgery.

So, I grabbed a cup of coffee at the corner beanery and a Sun-Times (for the crossword puzzle) and headed down to the Jesse Brown V.A. Hospital. I waited in the dental clinic for about half an hour, spending most of the time trying to figure out a seven letter word that means “Yo Mama” in Urdu.

When I finally entered the dentist’s office, I was gratified to see that the dentist had his diploma prominently displayed on the wall. It stated that his name was Dr. Frankie (Disco) Lopez and he was a graduate of the Triple A College of Dentistry & Bait Shop in Gary, Indiana.

After examining me for a few seconds the good doctor smiled sadistically and said, “Looks like I’m going to have to pull all four of your wisdom teeth and maybe a couple of others, just to be on the safe side.”

“What! Are you fucking crazy!”

“Dude, don’t get so excited. What’s the big deal? They’re just teeth. I pull a couple of hundred every day.”

“That’s not the point. You’re a dentist. You’re supposed to try and save teeth.”

“Save your teeth? Is that what you want to me do?”

“You might consider it.”

“Okay. No problem. I’ll save your teeth for you. I’ll leave them with the receptionist. You can pick them up on your way out.”

Needless to say, I’m going to get a second opinion, and a third and fourth if I have to. I’m not giving up a single tooth without a fight. Fuck ‘em.

Now, I want you to understand I’m not afraid of having my wisdom teeth pulled. Matter of fact, I’m not afraid of anything. I may be one of the roughest, toughest men you’ll ever meet. I’m mean as a snake. I eat leather and shit pointy-toed cowboy boots. I don’t use napkins when I eat ribs. I once fought Waterfront Alice to a draw in a savage street fight on Lincoln Avenue. I drink tequila without lime or salt. I prefer two-week old sushi to the fresh stuff, I am, in all respects, a bad, bad man.

There is, however, one tiny, itsy bitsy little thing that makes me a bit nervous. It’s called pain. I don’t want anything to do with it. Pain makes chickenshits of us all. I’m going to have enough pain when I undergo heart surgery. The pain of having wisdom teeth extracted is just going to add to the misery.

My eldest daughter, Nadia, had three impacted wisdom teeth extracted a couple of years ago and it broke my heart to see the pain she suffered. The worst thing a parent can experience is watching a child suffer and not be able to help.

The second worst thing is to suffer pain yourself.

So, I’m going to see if there are any alternatives to having my wisdom teeth yanked. I know wisdom teeth are worthless. All they do is cause problems. But i’ve grown fond of them over the years. I’d like to keep them a while longer.

NOTE: Big Mike, the Barn Boss of this decrepit outfit, and his lovely wife, Mrs. Barn Boss, recently relocated from Louisville, Kentucky to Bloomington, Indiana. According to Benny Jay, Big Mike snuck out of town in the middle of the night, owing seven-months rent on The Third City’s corporate offices in downtown Louisville. You’ve got to hand it to the Barn Boss. He’s always looking out for our best interests. Let’s all join in and wish Big Mike and his beauteous Mrs. health and happiness in their new home.

Randolph Street: Highway 61–Mid-American Road

Church–Luxora, Arkansas

Bar–Grand Marais, Minnesota

Van–New Orleans, Louisiana

Sofa–Burlington, Iowa

Harley–Forest Lake, Minnesota

Road–Mount Zion, Wisconsin

This is a personal look at mid-America that I shot between 1976 and 1985.  These were taken along the approximately 1700 miles of US Highway 61 that roughly follows the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Minneapolis, then juts northeast to Duluth and along the western edge of Lake Superior to Thunder Bay, Ontario.  All photographs © Jon Randolph.

Big Mike: Looahvill Ain’t Changed Me A Bit

Last night The Loved One and I slept soundly in our comfortable ranch house in the little village of Murray Hills. The little village had been swallowed up — administratively — by the colossus that is Louisville Metro back in 2003, four full years before we arrived here. Still, where we live can not in any way be described as big city. We’re surrounded by deep woods. We share territory with peregrine falcons, red tailed hawks, turkey vultures, foxes, skunks, and the odd coyote or two. In the middle of the night, every night, we hear the lonesome, sad horn of the freight train chugging through Jeffersontown, some ten miles away. It’s home.

Only it’s not our home anymore.

Yesterday morning, we met with a mortgage banker, our real estate agent, a Notary Public and a nice young couple who tried very hard to conceal their nervousness and excitement. With a few strokes of the pen, we transferred legal ownership of the joint to the couple. So, last night, we slept in their home.

Saturday, we load up the truck and move to Bloomington. Gulp.

To mark this passage, we decided to treat ourselves to a late, late breakfast at Barbara Ann’s diner down on Brownsboro Road. We’d eaten there on our second day in town in March 2007, newly arrived from Chicago and curious about these fresh digs. We figured it’d be a perfect bookend for our stay in the River City.

Despite it being March, the temperature hit the 80s that day two and a half years ago. March in Chicago may be spring by the calendar but it’s winter to the skin. We’d been bundled up only two days before; now we were wearing shorts and sandals as we sat in the cramped booth at Barbara Ann’s

Me: “Man, it’s really hot today, isn’t it?”

The waitress: “Yeah, now that y’mention it, it is a little warm.”

The waitress spoke in what was then to us the exotic accent of Kentucky. We grinned and told her what a nice place she had here and how nice Louisville was and, by the way, the weather is so nice today. Everything was nice to us those first few weeks and we felt compelled to let everyone know it. We also felt compelled to confess to everybody that we were fresh emigrés.

I’d go in to the gas station convenience store for the newspaper and coffee and to pay for my fillup. I’d be surprised that the counter was staffed by a bored kid wearing dreadlocks and tattoos — as if the species had been exclusive to Chicago.

Me: “Hi! Nice town you have here! What do we do, pay for gas first?”

The kid would roll his eyes as if he expected me to ask if he accepted US currency.

Even though half the population of Louisville speaks without a trace of an accent (to my ears), I promised myself I wouldn’t fall into a southern drawl here. So I exaggerated my normal speech to the point that I’m sure I sounded like a cross between Oscar Wilde and Leo Gorcey of the Bowery Boys. At the closing for our home in June, 2007, the sellers’ real estate agent, a proper southern doyenne wearing a flowered, billowing dress and a wide-brimmed Kentucky Derby hat, leaned close to me and confided, “Yew ha-ave an ack-say-ent!”

“Y’know what?” I responded. “So do you!” And the two of us laughed like lifelong friends.

Wednesday at Barbara Ann’s, the waitress was studying a Domino’s Pizza menu she’d gotten in the mail as we squeezed into our booth.

The waitress (to the woman working the grill): “Look at this — they got a pasta bowl here.”

The grill woman: “Yeah, so what? It’s a Eye-talian pizza place — ‘course they got a pasta bowl!”

The waitress: “No, no, no. I mean they got a bowl made outta pizza dough, filled with pasta. Y’eat the whole thay-ing.”

The grill woman: “Pshish!”

The waitress: “Y’must not care much fer your family if y’feed ‘em that much starch in a sittin’.” She turned to us. “Oh, Ah’m sorry. Lucky Grammaw ain’t here; she’da yelled at me fer makin’ y’wait.”

The grill woman: “Oh yeah? If Grammaw’s football game was on she’da made ‘em wait till the commercial b’fore she took care of ‘em.”

A man got up to pay his bill. The grill woman rang him up while the waitress took our order.

The grill woman: “How wuz it t’day?”

The man: “Good.”

The grill woman: “Better’n that Sausage McGriddle over at Mack Donald’s?”

The man: “Gooder.”

The grill woman: “‘Gooder!’ Wheredjew go ta hah school?”

The man: “I went ta hah school raht here in Ken-tucky!”

The grill woman: “Ah thought so!” And the two laughed like lifelong friends.

The waitress finished taking our order. “Anything else? she asked.

“Oh yeah,” I said, “we gotta have some o’that bisquits and gravy fer the table!”