Benny Jay: The Pros Go Shopping

It’s early Friday afternoon and I’m sitting in the doctor’s office struggling with a particularly perplexing crossword puzzle.

“Benny Jay?”

I look up to see the nurse. She leads me to the examining room and asks me what’s the problem.

I tell her my glasses broke. The lens fell out of the frame. Cheap frames. Got them at a place down the street – won’t go there again.  They charged me an arm and leg too. But I think they got these frames off of a truck down at Maxwell Street.

Pause.

You know — the old flea market….

No smile. Okay, bad joke. Won’t make any more — promise.

She gives me some tests — flashes things in my eyes, makes me read little letters on a chart. Tells me I’m near sided. Writes a prescription for new lenses. Leads me to a salesman in the showroom who takes me to the display rack and shows me the frames. I barely pay attention. Never liked shopping – except for books or records. Bores the hell out of me. I’m going through the motions. Thinking about that crossword puzzle. I agree to buy one of the first frames he shows me.

He tells me they’ll send the frames to the lab, the lab will fit in the lens and I should have my glasses in a week.

I nod. Pay. Walk out the door. Call my wife. “I got my glasses.”

“What do the frames look like?” she asks.

Pause. Hmm, what do they look like? “I dunno — I can’t remember….”

“You can’t remember? You just bought them….”

“I think they’re metal….”

“Are they gold?”

“Gold?”

“Don’t tell me you bought gold-colored frames?”

“What’s the matter with gold?”

“You did buy gold….”

“I didn’t say I bought gold — I said what’s the matter with gold?”

“Oh, my god, how could you buy gold? Those are old man’s glasses….”

“Okay, I didn’t say I bought gold….”

“I’m coming over….”

“What!”

“I got a break at work….”

“You’re kidding….”

“Don’t go anywhere….”

“No — no more shopping….”

Too late. The phone clicks off. I stand on the sidewalk and work on my crossword puzzle. Several minutes pass. I look up and see my wife coming up the street. She’s got her shopping game face on and everything.

She marches into the store and up to the salesman. “Can I see the frames my husband just bought?”

The guy holds up the frames. Phew, at least they’re not gold.

“Try them on,” my wife tells me.

I try them on.

“We can do better,” she says.

We go back to the rack. The salesman’s demeanor has changed. He realizes he’s in the presence of shopping greatness. He’s bringing his A game.

I feel like a high-priced model working with Parisian designers.

I try a bunch of them – on, off, on, off, on, off….

“I like these,” says my wife.

“Me, too,” says the salesman.

“They’re sharp,” says my wife.

“Yes,” he agrees. “I like how they sit on his nose….”

“Do you like them?” my wife asks.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah….”

Okay — it’s a deal.

The salesman fills out a new sales slip and out the door we go.

“Do you realize that’s the guy who sold me the first glasses?” I say.

“So….”

“So if they were so bad for me why did he sell them to me in the first place?”

“He wasn’t paying attention,” she says. “He didn’t see you the way I see you — he sees you like an old fuddy-duddy….”

“And how do you see me?”

“Cutting edge – hip….”

“Wow – that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me….”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah – don’t get all excited. I’ve got to get back to work….”

“You know what that salesman’s problem is?”

“What?”

“He needs a new pair of glasses….”

No Blaise: Joakim Noah!

When I bought my ticket to last summer’s Lollapalooza, I knew I’d be in for an experience. What I couldn’t predict was meeting Joakim Noah.

That’s right, I got up close and personal with a big-time Bulls player.

If you know nothing about Lollapalooza, you should know that crowd turnout for this three-day music festival is massive. I was afraid to blink at certain points in the day in case my friends might get enveloped into the madness in that millisecond.

No, I’m not kidding.

Anyway…

Seeing basketball players on TV you know they’re tall. But because they’re all so tall, it’s hard to realize their height in terms of the rest of us here in the real world.  Post-Joakim meeting I’ve been enlightened—the dude is huge.

Remember my reference on crowd size at Lolla… Not even the music-loving mass could keep Joakim out of my line of vision.

Making our way from one stage to another, my girl, Anika, looks up, points, and simply shouts: JOAKIM!

There he was, at the beer tent no less.

I knew there was a reason he was my favorite Bulls player.

As is the natural reaction when you spot a noteworthy person within your proximity, we ran over to snap a picture with him.

You’ll have to take my word for it, but I am tall. On the non-NBA scale, that is. I’m used to being the head above the other heads in a group photo. But I ain’t got nothin’ on Joakim.

Anika, Hannah (my other girl), and I catch up to him and beg him for a photo. Unsurprisingly, he’s completely nice about it. Hannah and I take a place on either side of him.  Anika snaps the pic.

Sorry, Ani.

As soon as I fell into pose, I realized how tall he actually was. No longer was I floating above — in fact, my head just slightly reached the height of his shoulder.

How do people play defense on this guy? Oh, right – in his world, he’s almost short.

The camera clicks and my association with this Chicago Bull is captured for eternity.

We step out from under his wingspan and for two seconds, the three of us just sort of look at him like little girls. Giddy and ridiculous. He breaks our child-like stupor by thanking us and gliding back into the crowd.

I think I might’ve awkwardly shouted “THANK…YOU!”  But maybe not. My memory can only comprehend so much about that moment.

When I finally floated back down to real life and regained normal consciousness, I begin to understand what just happened. Not only did I meet Joakim, but I had my picture taken with him.

A picture I could post online!

And show it to everyone I know!

Which I did.

It was digital gold.

Even my Celtics-loving father was impressed.

Why write about that picture today, after so many months have passed? Well, I happened to find it just the other day. It’s as golden as ever. Look for yourself.

By the way, that’s me on your right and Hannah on your left. Nice picture, right? But now that I look at it, there’s a bunch of questions I wish I’d asked him. Like — who’s the dude in the back and what’s with the yellow-framed shades?

Oh, well. Next time — I swear.

I posted it on my Facebook page and everybody was either way impressed or totally jealous — all over again.

Even Two-Headed Boy thought it was pretty cool.

My picture with Joakim is the gift that just keeps giving….

by No Blaise

Letter From Milo: He Can Take His Nobel Prize and Stick It Up His…

This guy Stiglitz is starting to piss me off. Just because he won a Nobel Prize in Economics he thinks he’s some kind of Big Shot. If you want to know the truth, the reason he turned to Economics was that he was a complete failure as a bookie in Gary, Indiana. All the good math students in Gary aspired to be bookies. Joe, unfortunately, couldn’t cut the mustard. When Bears and Bulls were mentioned, Stiglitz immediately thought of the stock market. What a huge waste of talent.

Anyway, the reason I’m pissed at Stiglitz is that he snubbed Benny Jay, my good friend and fellow blogger here at The Third City. You see, when we were having a raging debate on this site over who was Gary’s greatest writer, the esteemed Morry Frank, the immortal Monroe Anderson or the well-hung Milo Samardzija, Benny insisted on including Joseph Stiglitz in that distinguished group.

Benny even wrote a piece on the subject, saying that anyone who had been awarded a Nobel Prize should, at the least, be given some consideration for the title of Gary’s greatest scribe. After giving it a great deal of thought, while at the same time consuming a joint and a couple of bottles of wine, I grudgingly agreed.

After writing the piece, Benny decided to forward the article to Stiglitz, thinking that the “great” man would be flattered to be mentioned in the same breath with me, Morry and Monroe – at least that’s what Benny told me. But I know his real motivation. He just wanted to correspond with a Nobel Prize winner so that he could have something to brag about at fancy dinner parties.

“I just got an email from Joseph Stiglitz.”

“Who?”

“Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winner in Economics and, arguably, Gary’s greatest writer.”

“You know the fucker?”

“Well, heh, heh, we’re not real close, but we do exchange emails on occasion.”

“What did he send you an email about?

“Nothing important. Just small talk. Mainly, we discussed, ah, the Bears and Bulls.”

Sadly, Stigliz never replied to Benny’s email. All he got was an automated response, saying that Stiglitz was available for personal appearances, speaking engagements, shopping center openings, Bar Mitzvahs, and throwing out opening-day baseballs. Further correspondence should be addressed to his agent.

That’s what you get for fucking around with Nobel Prize winners. Except for Saul Bellow and Mother Teresa, they’re mostly a bunch of elitist bastards with nothing going for them except a freakish sort of Rain Man intelligence.

By the way, did I mention that I hate the Nobel Prize? Well, not the Prize itself, just the man who endowed them, that low-life Swedish cocksucker, Alfred Nobel.

Alfred Nobel made his fortune by inventing dynamite, which, at the time, was the most powerful explosive known to man. Dynamite was responsible for killing untold numbers of human beings on battlefields all over the world. The death toll in World War I was appalling. Millions of people died in the last of Europe’s dynastic wars. And a huge amount of those deaths were directly attributable to Alfred Nobel’s diabolical invention.

I won’t even mention the toll that dynamite has taken on our planet. Check out some areas in Kentucky and West Virginia, where dynamite was used to level mountains and denude native forests in the frenzied search for coal. Some of those coal fields look like especially bleak parts of the moon.

After foisting dynamite on the human race, Alfred Nobel seemingly had an attack of remorse. He established the Nobel Prizes to salve his rotten conscience. And, get this, the most notable of the Prizes is the Nobel Peace Prize. What gall! What fucking nerve!

A peace prize from someone who has the blood of millions on his hands. Why not give Charles Manson a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame while you’re at it.

Just thinking about that damned old dynamiter put me in a terrible frame of mind. I had to talk to someone to calm me down. I called Big Mike, the Barn Boss of this scabby, debt-ridden outfit.

“Hey, Big Mike, it’s me, Milo.”

“Make it quick, asshole. I’ve got a blog to run.”

“I just wanted to tell you that I’ve got my blog ready for Monday.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s about the Nobel Prize.”

“What! Are you fucking nuts! Why are you writing about the Nobel Prize? Our numbers are down. You should be writing about porn, something that’ll bring our readers back.”

“Okay, I’ll write about porn next week. By the way, have you given any more thought to my request for a raise?”

“No.”

Big Mike: Life Ain’t A Movie, Folks

And now it’s The Loved One’s turn. Poor thing. I’m just getting over this rotten flu and now she’s hurtling (and hurling) head-on into the second crest of its roller coaster ride.

I wish I could say I’d do anything to take it away from her, up to and including suffering it myself in her stead, but I’m afraid I can’t. Or, more accurately, won’t. If you think that’s selfish or unhusbandly, then you haven’t had this thing. If I had to go through it again, they’d have to shoot me like a broken down old horse.

ME, AFTER THE FLU.

My lovely bride was laying inert on the sofa last night as I celebrated my return to the living by baking oatmeal cookies. She was staring through half-lidded eyes at Turner Movie Classics when the eight-o’clock feature came on. Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Man, I’m glad I caught the opening titles and so knew I was watching a work of fiction.

The movie had it all. High-level government conspiracies. Obfuscating scientists. Phony media stories planted by the powers that be to mislead the public. Bureaucrats and public officials dismissively waving off the pleas of earnest, honest simple folk. True believers and wild-eyed cranks joining forces to uncover the truth.

I could easily have mistaken it for the Fox News Saturday evening report.

ANOTHER COVER-UP EXPOSED!

I don’t know if Steven Spielberg bought into the UFO/alien visitation craze when he made the movie. For that matter, I don’t know if he believed that sharks were an actual safety concern to the American public when he made Jaws, two years earlier. I assume he knew the difference between fiction and reality when he was shooting the two films. Sadly, the American public doesn’t know the difference.

Too many people, to borrow a phrase from the eminent sage Cecil Adams, thought Close Encounters was a documentary.

For a long time, the conspiracies-under-every-bed gang was relegated to late night talk radio. Insomniacs and other excitable sorts could fever-dream about one-world governments, UFO cover-ups, secret societies, and Nostradamus until the sun came up and they’d have to go back to pretending they were sane.

We could titter about these people when they lived on the fringe. But now they’re among the most prominent opinion-shapers in America. Glenn Beck last night whipped out his trusty blackboard during his keynote address at the CPAC annual convention and showed, conclusively, how “Progressivism” has been eating away at this holy land since the days of the Model T. It’s practitioners, a secret-handshake cabal whose boss is now Barack Hussein Obama, have nothing in mind except the overthrow of America’s principles.

Phew. Tall order, no? Not for the evil Progressives — those who want equitable health care for all, who want to see struggling homeowners get the same kind of shake Wall Street bankers got, who’d like to see average people’s kids be able to afford college. You know, really sick, destructive stuff.

Progressivism’s raison d’etre is “to destroy the Constitution,” Beck howled. He went on to say, “We need to address it as if it was a cancer…, it must be eradicated.” Sheesh!

PRETENDING HE’S SANE — SORT OF.

Beck’s baying at the moon would have been a joke in another year. For instance, he says Obama’s health care reform is nothing more than the president’s secret plan to enact slavery reparations. Obama’s environmental legislation, he adds, is simply another secret plot to rob from the hardworking, deserving rich and give it to the lazy-assed poor. No one’s laughing at Beck this year. In fact, he’s prominent on the New York Times best-seller lists.

He speaks of high-level government conspiracies. Obfuscating scientists. Phony media stories planted by the powers that be to mislead the public. Bureaucrats and public officials dismissively waving off the pleas of earnest, honest simple folk. His urges his army of true believers and wild-eyed cranks to join forces and uncover the truth.

If Steven Spielberg had made a movie with a character like Glenn Beck back in 1977, no one would have bought it. Instead he made a movie about spindly UFO pilots working hand-in-hand with the US Army and eminent scientists to fool the American public about a rock festival they wanted to stage near Devil’s Tower, Wyoming. I wish Close Encounters was the real thing and Fox News a figment of a creative filmmaker’s imagination.

Benny Jay: Big Fan

I see this really scary movie the other night. Called Big Fan. It’s the one written and directed by Robert D. Siegel (the guy who wrote The Wrestler) about this parking lot attendant (played by Patton Oswalt) who’s a freaking lunatic about sports.

It’s not scary in the traditional way — like Willard or Candyman — where creepy things jump out at you in the middle of the night.

It’s scary in a more personal way, like Siegel puts a mirror to my face and makes me think: Holy shit, is this pathetic little nutcase like me?

The parking lot attendant — AKA Big Fan — lives for his favorite team, the New York Giants, sorta like me and the Chicago Bulls.

So when the movie ends, I sit in the darkness of my living room, while everyone else in the house is asleep, and count the ways that I’m different from Big Fan….

1.)  Big Fan lies in his bed at night and listens to sports-radio talk shows, waiting for the moment, when they’ll take his call and he’ll read his comments from a script he’s prepared….

I don’t do that. None of it. Don’t even listen to sports radio. Well, at least not in my room. Hardly even listen to it in the car anymore cause the antenna’s broken and I can’t get AM radio and neither my wife nor I will take the time to get it fixed. The radio antenna, that is.

2.) Big Fan wears a New York Giants replica football jersey with his favorite player’s name and number on the back….

I own no replica jerseys. Never have, never will. The closest I got is championship Bulls T-shirts from the Michael Jordan Glory Days back in 1990s. Got all six of them, bought them at the celebratory rallies in Grant Park. Wore them so much they fell apart. Now they’re great for sleeping. Call them sleeping T-shirts. They’re soft and comfy. The older ones are tattered and torn and one of these days I’ll have to throw them out. I just can’t bring myself to do it. Does that sound nuts? Maybe. But at least I don’t own any replica T-shirts.

3.) Big Fan is obsessed with his favorite player. He accidentally bumps into him at a gas station and follows him around all night. Winds up buying the player drinks at a sleazy strip club in Manhattan. Something happens. The player gets angry and….

I won’t tell you. Don’t want to give the movie away. Great scene, though. Really, really creepy.

Here’s the good news. I’m not obsessed with any player on the Bulls. I swear. If I see a Bulls player on the street, I wouldn’t ever follow him around. Matter of fact, I wouldn’t even let on that I knew who he is. I’m like that. One time my wife and I saw Matt Dillon — you know, the movie star — at a pizza parlor in suburban New York. He was sitting in the next booth over. My wife was like — “Oh, my God, don’t look now, but isn’t that Matt Dillon.”

I cut her off. Asked her to pass me the red peppers. Changed the subject. Didn’t even look. Had my back to Matt Dillon the whole time. Like he wasn’t even there. Had to prove a point. I don’t worship celebrities! Though now that I think about it, I kind of wish I’d at least taken a peek — just to see what he was eating.

There are other obsessive sports-crazy things that Big Fan does that lead to his….well, I won’t tell you what it leads to. Like I said, go rent the movie yourself (if you live in Chicago, get it at Darkstar).

There’s a great line in the movie where one character tells another character who’s been hit on the head: “How can you have a concussion if you don’t have any brains?”

I love that line. I don’t know how it relates to anything I’m saying, but I love that line so much I just had to repeat it.

Anyway, bottom line is this: Big Fan’s got lessons for us all. Not just sports freaks, but everybody. Cause, let’s face it, we all have something. Some just got it worse than others….

Randolph Street: Mas Luche Libre

Introduction

Pre-Match

Mascarita Sagrada applies toe-hold

Fans

El Malficio Vs. Principe Aztec

Choke Hold

El Malficio Holds Principe Franky

Mascarite Sagrada

All photos © Jon Randolph

Big Mike: I Don’t Know What’s Making Me Sicker

The 2009-10 seasonal flu which hit me like a Mack truck a week ago today seemed to be easing off the last time I posted here. Sadly, in the intervening 48 hours, it has returned with a vengeance. It’s as if the driver of the truck, noticing he had run me over, decided it would be best to back up and run me over again, a wrongful death court judgment being more financially prudent than a that of catastrophic injury.

The 2009-10 Seasonal Flu Virus (No Microscope Needed)

Because my entire body has been transformed into a jiggly mass of lemon jello, I can’t find the wherewithal to write a cogent post. That’s my excuse today. As for all the previous days I’ve posted, I’ll think of other excuses if you need them.

Anyway, I’ve decided to perform a public service in my hour of agony. I’m going to provide some political tips for the likes of you who feel that one Barack Hussein Obama is the second coming of (take your pick) Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin or a combination of Dr. Jack Kevorkian and Divine.

The governor of my very own state of Indiana announced he’s not going to run for a third term. The mainstrem media tells us this is bad because Evan Bayh is one of the rational, centrist voices of the Democratic party. He isn’t. he joined Republicans in opposing the public option in the health care debate not because of any lofty philosophical principles nor fear that big bad government was growing out of control. He opposed it because the woman who he (presumably) shares his bed and worldview, Susan Bayh, owns as much as a million bucks worth of WellPoint, Inc. stock and sits on the health insurance giant’s board of directors.

I’ll agree with those who call Evan Bayh rational and centrist as long as they agree that means he’s WellPoint’s statehouse gofer.

The Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) will hold its annual circle jerk this weekend in Washington. Its lineup of speakers reads like a who’s who of Republican heartthrobs: Newt Gingrich, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, the ghoulish Ann Coulter, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Bushey-boy’s UN ambassador John Bolton, Senator Jim DeMint, Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum. If that isn’t enough to drive a non-theist to say a couple of novenas, then maybe this is — the event is being co-sponsored by none other than the John Birch Society.

You read right — the John fucking Birch Society. The people who accused Dwight D. Eisenhower of being a commie stooge. The people who  opposed Martin Luther King in the 60s because, they said, he had pals who were commies. The people who fought against the 1964 Civil Rights Act because, you guessed it, it was sorta communistic in granting the federal government powers to stop states from screwing over black people. It must be nice to live in a world wherein all evils can be attributable to a single cause. Nice, like a four-year-old’s world.

They’re ba-a-a-a-ck!

Anyway, the Birchers disappeared from the public view in the 1980s after the death of the organization’s founder and after it had said Ronald Reagan was a communist lackey. But now, apparently, they’re back.

So let me pass on a second don’t-fall-for-the-bullshit tip. The Republican party is losing its mind. It’s been taken over by fringe-sters who are driven mad — as in hatter — by commies and Negroes. The Dems may now be the party of the fettucini spine and the corporate portfolio, but the GOP is whacked!

It can mean one of two things. Either we as a holy nation are in for a terrifying ride over the next couple of decades or the Republicans are dead in the water. Neither option appeals to me. I don’t like the idea of a one-party state even if that party is my own.