The Gayest Show on Earth

So Sunday was a little blah. Blah with a rainbow, I guess. I drove back to Chicago, despite a cranky bandaged-up knee and a dangerously persistent sleepiness that set in somewhere near mile 170 or so, and then spent the better part of the afternoon dealing with the new parking situation created by the rampant partying and homosexuality to strike my part of town (gay pride parade). Actually, one could say that rampant homosexuality struck my part of town some time ago, and may have resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs. Anyway, it was a clusterfuck in every conceivable way, including some ways I did not realize the human imagination had access to.

That was all well and good, but what concerned me the most were the police barricades blocking off portions of streets I wished to drive and park on, including large sections of Halsted and Broadway (GayStreet USA and its gay little sister) , even hours after the parade had finished. This led to some cursing on my part, some angry faces, some threatening gestures towards other motorists, street hooligans, and officers of the law, but ultimately it led me two miles from home, to the corner of Irving Park and Sheffield, which is where I ended up parking.

Normally I wouldn't mind parking out there in a pinch, but that's because I usually haven't quite so nearly hyperextended my knee in half the previous day playing ultimate frisbee. The details of the attempted rearranging of my knee's connective tissue, such as the anterior crucial ligament, go more or less as follows: Brian runs as fast as he can and jumps as high in the air as he can to try and block a scoring pass, misses said pass, attempts to hit the ground running but instead lodges his heel firmly in a small depression, thus straightening his leg out in the direction from which it came as the rest of his 160 lbs try to keep going the direction they were going, an endeavor in which his knee attempts to assist them by bending ever so slightly the wrong way before realizing how painful and stupid that is. Brian then crumpled to ground and gnashed and wept and rent the grass about him like 5 year old for about 45 sec, then got up and hobbled away, covered with abbarasions and shame, and with grass in his teeth.

Anyway, there art thy pissed at the prospect of a 2 mile walk with an ace bandage around my gimpy knee. Yes, I could have taken a cab, but 500,000 people in Chicago could have also decided to be less excited about being gay and not ruined parking for everyone else. There, I said it.

It was on the second half of my gimpy journey that I met Igud. Idug was the man walking behind me for a while, who apparently fancied me, and eventually caught up to me and struck up a conversation. It started out in the usual fashion, which has been summarized for your reading enjoyment:
"Hi."
"Hi."
"How you doing?"
"Fine, thanks."
"Are you from around here?"
"Kind of..."
"Where do you live?"
"Actually, I live with my girfriend."

Idag was very apologetic, saying in his quietly feminine way that he didn't mean to imply that I "looked gay" which, given some of the things I had seen that day was pretty good news I guess. I didn't think that he "looked gay" either (I mean, aside from trying to pick up a dude on the street), though I was clearly mistaken. Anyway, I kind of thought that would be the end of it, but he just kept walking next to me, shyly chatting. So I just kept awkwardly chatting back. We did the "Where ya from?" and all that bullshit. Apparently Ibug was from "the former USSR" as he put it, specifically Ukraine. He had lived here for 17 years, which I guess is why he didn't have an accent. I don't remember much of what was said, though he did encouraged me to not feel like a drain on society or, more aptly, Heather, just because I was unemployed and not contributing anything to the betterment of mankind, or at least the betterment of the economy. I tried to steer conversation towards the World Cup, as Ukraine was set to play Switzerland in the round of 16 the next day, but he wasn't super interested in football. Finally, after what seemed to be 5 months of awkward rambling sine I offically ran out of polite conversation fodder, we reached Roscoe and parted ways. I'm sure there's some sort of lesson to be had here, like don't live in Boystown if you're straight and have a penis, or something like that, but it's lost on me.

Anyway...

Farewell, Idig, we will always have Broadway!

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The Indianapolis 1500

So if this was the weekend for me to be a bad boyfriend, I chose a typical avenue of neglect: Sports. I was supposed to hang out with Heather this weekend, but again found myself on the road (the marriage of my ass and the car seat is approaching something of a milestone, me thinks), headed east to the Supper Club Series (competitive eating) on Thursday and then south on Friday afternoon to watch the National Championships of USA Track and Field in Indi, then north to Saline again Friday night so that I might be able to make a 5 mile trip west to the Ultimate Fields on Saturday morning. Amidst all this sporting on my mind it is easy to forget that I ditched Heather at a Friday night baseball game. Heather claims the game was most enjoyable, but she forgets one thing... I hate the fucking White Sox, frequently wish death upon the White Sox, make voodoo dolls of the White Sox, and in general, wipe my ass with the GD, ef'ing, a-hole, good for nothing White Sox.
...so there.

Anyway, normally I wouldn't have bailed on a free baseball game, even one featuring the God forsaken Sux, black-hole-to-all-that-is-good-and-right-in-the-world Sux, but there was something about the 2006 USATF National Championships that made them different from every other USATF National Championship, and that was the participation of high school teammate and former buddy of sorts, Steve "Zorro" Sherer. Or, perhaps more accurately, Steve "I Run a Sub-4 Mile" Sherer, or maybe more accurate still, Steve "I Am a Ridiculously, Incredibly, Stupidly, Outrageously Fast Fast Fast Man" Sherer. Yes. Yes that's it. You see, a few weeks ago, Steve ran a race and won it. This race was 1500 meters long (the "metric mile," it's about 100 meters short of a full mile) and a regional qualifier of sorts (for the championships of all track and field in the entire country), and Steve went out and ran it in 3 minutes 41 seconds, which the scientists tell us is the equivalent of a 3 minute 58 second mile.

3:58.

If this time doesn't really mean much to you, all you really need to know is that until about 50 years ago, these same scientists maintained that this was, in the very simplest terms, an impossible feat; that it was physically impossible for a man to run a mile that fast (indeed, it is an average speed faster than the average man can sprint); that 4 minutes was a "natural barrier" through which no man born on earth would ever venture. Man could, at this time, reverse the flow of rivers, move mountains, ride rockets through the air, and split the atom, but Man could not run a mile faster than 4 minutes flat. I apologize for the melodrama, but even today, when the world record is 3:43.13 and sub-4:00 performances are relatively commonplace, even among collegiate stars and sometimes even high schoolers, there is still a degree of wonder at the thought of running four consecutive 59.9 second quarter miles. In the minds of some, running a sub 4 minute mile is still an assault on nature on par with an oil spill. Needless to say, I got excited when I heard that Steve had done it and that as a result was going to run against some of the fastest men on the planet at one of the biggest track meets in the country. It didn't take long to discover that Schmerberg had become similarly excited and for us both to decide that the first Wall-Berg road trip since '04? would be to Indianapolis on June 23rd.




Land of the Indians: The Crossroads of America

We left Saline a little after noon on Friday, afforded ourselves some creative navigating on our beloved US 12, and by about 5:00 or so were purchasing tickets with a Schmerbette in tow. Interestingly enough, we pretty much missed Steve's race :) I know, I know, that's a pretty "facepalm" moment for all of us, but the gun went off while we were in line and the best I could manage was to sneak glimpses through a spot in the fence as The Saline Stallion, no, that's no good, "I Am an Incredibly, Ridiculously, Stupidly, Outrageously Fast Fast Fast Man" wrote a check at the 800 that his legs couldn't cash and faded in the stretch, finishing second to last in his heat, which included 1500m American Record holder, likely blood-doper, "I don't need these shoes, maybe you do" Nike commercial star, and general Kenyan-born bad-ass, Bernard Lagat. Still, our excitement was not dampened, as we proceeded to watch the remaining heats of the 1500 with all their respective speed-demons from our "Gold Section" seats near the finish line, which also had good views of the long jump, pole vault, and javelin, which I enjoyed but Schmerberg largely ignored in his pursuit of ogling Christian Smith's "uber hot girlfriend" three rows down from us.

A Beast with Two Backs

concerning the next paragraph, apologies in advance to Melanie, who I think is from Indiana (or is it Illinois? crap).

A break in the action gave us a chance to explore Indianapolis a little, which despite our zeal for explorventures, is something Luke and I viewed with mixed emotions. You see, the thing is, we hate Indiana. We don't like it. We don't like thinking about it and we don't like being in it. Actually, none of my friends do. Indiana is a dead zone to us; something that is confronted uncomfortably and must be navigated with great personal grief. So the prospect of venturing further into its heart was met with sighs and skepticism. I honestly don't know how much of the preceding text to chalk up to good ole hyperbole, but it's probably not enough to make it nice. Anyway, as is most often the case we were at least A. Michael Jackson, B. partially, C. entirely, D. Unforgivably, E. War on Iraq wrong. There were some gems to be found in the Amateur Sports Capital of the World, and I took pictures of about half of them (5). But the very best thing to be found in this city, at least for our money, has got to be a little bit of post-modern Americana that the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Herron School of Art and Design (IUPUI-HSAD) likes to call "Trophy." "Trophy," as you can tell, is a plus-sized sculpture of two large ruminants (cervidae missionarus) engaged in a rousing display of what we hu-mans might call the mommy-daddy dance. "Trophy" is also prominently displayed just yards from a tennis stadium, where families of all ages can go to view quality athletic competition or where underfunded schools can bring children when they run out of money for pop-up books explaining where baby bronze statues come from and how to "crash the custard truck" and all that. From my six hour visit, I'd say "Trophy" represents at least half of the character of Indianapolis. The city is clean, the city is new looking, the city is pleasant and has good manners, but mostly, the city is boring. And that is the official, overly judgmental report.

Mommy's a Horse

The end of Indi-canal wandering/feeding meant return to the IUPUI Stadium and resumed track and field spectating. The remaining events of interest were the 100 finals, the men's and women's 5000, and the men's 10,000, which essentially combined for a track-nerd joygasm, the details of which I will mercifully spare you. Steve met up with us in the stands to watch the 5k and 10k, which was pretty fun, since I haven't gotten to actually hang out with him for probably years now, and it's somehow an extra good time to poke fun at the elite athletes who are struggling in the races when a quasi-elite athlete is doing it along with you... except when you can't agree on which ones to make fun of and which ones to praise, but eh, you get the picture.

Perhaps the greatest thing for a track-nerd about going to a meet like this is that while some of your favorite athletes achieve a genuine celebrity status and garner media attention and sportscenter sound clips, many of them only ever manage a cult-celebrity status, and most of them don't even rise that far. The point is that even a huge star-packed meet like the national championships is a lot like any other track meet, in which there are no locker rooms and team buses and secret tunnels that separate the athletes and fans, just husbands and wives waiting out by the fence with the Lincoln Navigator running... if that. It is for reasons such as these that while exiting a venue a spectator, such as myself, can be walking almost right next to a widely recognized, world-class, scandal-ridden, multitime Olympic gold-medalist and not even realize it until he's just pointed at her and said, "He's like a horse." To which the small child riding on her shoulders says, "Who's a horse, mommy?"

"Mommy's a horse."

Oh dear. She's looking at me.

See, what Marion Jones didn't realize, was that elite young distance star, Dathan Ritzenhein, of Rockford Michigan, former nemesis of Saline High School and current hero of skinny white boys everywhere, was cooling down from his race and jogged right in front of us all and back towards the stadium, about which, Schmerbette remarked, "Oh my, his legs are gross. They're all skinny and vein-y." To which I stupidly responded, "Eh, he's like a horse," while looking back in his direction. It just so happened that Marion Jones, track star of track stars, was walking almost directly between us with her little daughter, and that said munchkin overheard me and decided to insert herself into the conversation. The funniest part of this for me is that countless ESPN anchors and sports analysts and field correspondents have tried to get Marion Jones to say a lot of things, most often (at least in the last few years) regarding the fact that she is probably as dirty as a 2 Live Cru tune (or barring that, a Frenchman), but it was me that got her to say, "Mommy's a horse."

I would love to say that my weekend ends there, but I just can't. What I can say is that thankfully you don't have to read about it anymore. At least not today. But in all likelihood I have two more posts about the weekend of 6/32-6/25. I apologize for how long all this BS is, but that's how it goes I guess. Seeya soon, sports fans.

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Death Mating Call Fetishes Adventures of a Salesman

As promised, here begin The Make-Up Tales; random adventures from the last month or so that leap wildly over the "fit for internet publication bar," set somewhere near their ankles. As you might expect (and my feeble attention span demands) when it comes to the order in which these dramas are regurgitated, chronology has been sexually assaulted in the ear and left for dead...

JUNE 9th: Buy My Beavers!

This is a big one. A whopper. It's so cool that anyone who gets near it breaks out in to commercial-beverage-advertisement-style song, dance, and gayety. Like most things this cool, it begins with a bad idea. This particular bad idea was to wrap up some resources that I didn't have into a trip I couldn't afford so as to sell some shirts that no one would buy. It was a bad idea, but at least it was simple: I would print up some flashy fliers with yuppie Michigan designs on them and drive up the entire west coast of The MotherState, stopping in every tourist-trap t-shirt store in every coastal village to pitch my shirt designs to anyone who would listen. But get this, everyone listened! They were all nods and smiles. It was very CocaCola.



Of course, I could not possibly foresee any of those nods and smiles beforehand, so when it came time to actually carry out this bad idea, I was beginning to think what anyone would hopefully think when they were about to drop a bunch of money in some sort of door-to-door salesman scam, which was that it was a bad idea. In truth, by the time I left Chicago I was developing a profound terror of the prospect of walking in to someone else's store with the intent of doing anything more than buying a lollipop. By the time I reached South Haven a couple hours later and stepped up to the door of the first seasonal kitsch-factory in sight I could scarcely contain my nausea. "This place," said the Irrational Fear Zone of my brain (I.F.Z., roughly 90% by volume, usually concerns itself with booger patrol and public transportation), "is full of bad spirits. Think Neverland Ranch. Bad things are going to happen to you in there." I was fully prepared to side with the rarely-trusty I.F.Z. but Heather, my dependable salesman sidekick, kicked me through the door and face-to-face with the manager. I stumbled, I mumbled, I smiled weakly, I gave them my flyer, I left. It was all pretty painless, and from SH to Holland to Grand Haven to Muskegon to Ludington to Manistee to Onekema to Arcadia it was repeated several times with varying degrees of futility. It seemed that many of these places, friendly as they were, purchased their summer inventory several centuries in advance. On the plus side though, I was learning things, and by the end of the day I got my shpeal down to the point where I would say most of the right things without spontaneously breaking down into tears. Still, it was a good thing that Elberta and, more importantly, The Cabbage Shed lay at the end of our trail for the day. There are few stresses that cannot be cured by Shed IPA, a wet burrito served in an armadillo shell, and the vocal stylings of Gus, crutch-enforced jowl-jiggler of BiZANGO.

Best cover of Party Like it's 1999, EVER.

In the morning we went to some stores in Frankfort. We went to a store called David's Harborside Clothing. We went inside David's Harborside Clothing, spoke with David, made eye contact with David, did not cry, and walked out of David's store with two orders. Two. THAT CRAZY FUCKER BOUGHT SOME OF MY SHIRTS TO PUT IN HIS STORE! My shirts are going to be sold in a store. In Frankfort. My shirts are going to be sold in a retail store in Frankfort called David's Harborside Clothing. That was pretty much enough to send me off the deep end for a good hour or two (think a Coors Light commercial, or Fanta). So after closing the sale at David's we went commercial-beverage-advertisement frolicking at the beach (definitely Fanta), feeding at the Polish joint in Elberta, and consuming at the consignment heaven that is Smokestack Storage (Budweiser).

At length I was able to regain my composure enough to hit the sales trail again, but with one success in the bag it was hard not to give in to the desire to allow the trip to devolve into standard up north sight-seeing and adventuring, so I made sure to include enough of both. We went up to Glen Arbor, with stops at Loon lake and Empire on the way, and then cross county over to Traverse City and up to Charlevoix. Charlevoix probably had the most promising prospect of the bunch (Cindy, of Seasonal kitsch factory #? said she might have room in a couple weeks), but not surprisingly the highlight was the wine and dine. The Villager Pub, followed by a movie and then this was more than enough to erase the memory of any creepy store owners in Traverse City (did I mention the stores inTraverse are creepier than clown shit?), along with one or more World Wars.

After that, we took the back way home, and in the morning met even more nice shop-owners in even more Benzie villages and finally began the journey south to the west to the north to the Chi, with a brief interlude in The Dutchness for some more wining and dining with familiar folks from familiar places.

May I conclude in saying that it was a brutally kick-ass weekend?

And thorough.

Well, not super thorough... I didn't make it as far north as hoped(Harbor Springs), and I did miss a few little guys on the way(St. Joseph, Allegan, Pentwater, et al), but still, don't rain on my parade, you hippie.

EDIT: I almost forgot, we met a porcupine too. He was having a very Big Lebowski moment.

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The Best Description of a Buffalo’s Temperament is Unpredictable.

Wouldn't it just be easier to say that I've been on a two-month drunk? That I ran off to Chicago, lodged a bottle of bourbon in my face and in turn lodged myself in some Great Lake collection pipe a mile off-shore where I learned to breathe underwater and speak with the fishes?

I feel like that would be easiest.

Sadly, it would be only partly true. It would also leave out the most exciting stuff. So here begins the painstaking process of reacquainting you with my life, as I have been reacquainted with it over the last month or so.

For starters, my new 'hood in the 312. It's a nice place. It has all your standard conveniences, such as girlfriend, cable TV, internet, ineffective climate control, indoor plumbing, grown men to hit on you when you're not feeling so special, easy access to lakefront parks/running, easy access to public transportation, easy access to food and drink, and easy access to US 41 (keep in mind that it somehow simultaneously renders anything outside a square mile or so virtually inaccessible...). It's called 543 Roscoe Street, and it is my generously donated chi-shelter.

The upside-down tree marks the buried treasure.

With a closer view, one can see that my proximity to "The Great Water" is somewhat enviable.


The view is dorky, with a 100% chance of nerd.


This is a shot from a little ways down my block. The buildings get bigger as you near the lake. Presumably to shield the rest of us from tsunamis when Benton Harbor attacks with seismological weapons...


Still, despite all this photographic and satellite evidence to the contrary, reports of my body odor relocation have been greatly exaggerated, considering that I have made the 250 mile journey 'tween The Deuce and The Chi about 3 times already (I've made good friends with the "Michiana" NPR), including one trip that lasted a week. So far I've been able to make a good deal of gas money by mowing lawns in Saline, which means that on the spring, passable motor function applied to rural manual labor has thus-far out-earned a four year degree and residence in a global capitalist mecca, which is bragable.

It also brings us to a much anticipated update, that being my employment status. As you have probably heard or guessed, my employment status remains null. I had a very promising interview with Scott Foresman a while back for an in-house illustration position, but thus far nothing has come of it. My cousin Kelly, who works there as a designer, was kind enough to snag it for me, and was very optimistic about my chances, and I thought the interview itself went well, but I guess that's how it goes. Aside from that I have had virtually zero luck in cornering a job. Around here even the lowliest freelance jobs are fought for tooth and nail, and apparently I just don't have the skills to land them, let alone the ones that might equate gainful employment.

None the less, I have enjoyed an unprecedented spurt of productivity in other areas, specifically the marginally fruitful yet largely rewarding t-shirt racket. Given my persistently rampant unemployment I've had a decent amount of time to dump into making new designs and expanding the operation to include a spreadshirt section. The spreadshirt portion allows me to do fun things like compromise my designs and make less money per shirt, but it does so in such a way that actually makes me smile, which is by allowing me to offer an ever-expanding line of questionably promising products with no increased financial risk. It's kind of like when your friend sleeps with your sister, but you don't really mind 'cause you're doing his mom...

er, something like that.

Needless to say, consumer excitement is at an all time high.

Here are a few examples from the exponentially expanding spreadshop-shirt line:





Ok, that about does it for now... Just enough to convince you that I'm not dead; not enough to convince you that I'm not actually in Canada making love to life-size cuttouts of Winona Ryder in a Mountie outfit. Many of the past month's adventures will be posted soon. 'Till then I'm going to go enjoy some 25 cent burritos, a 39 cent beer, and some World Cup Football (No commercials! Totally meg brag!) Cheers.


Oh yeah, the fishes, they say that they enjoy eating our garbage just as much as any other animal, if not more, and that gummi-worms make their doodoo purple, regardless of the color of the worm.

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