Last One in the Pool's a Polyester Bride

And then he said, "Do you wanna be a polyester bride?
Or do you want to hang your head and die?
Do you want to find alligator cowboy boots they just put on sale?
Do you want to flap your wings and fly away from here?"

"Princess, do you really want to flap your wings and fly?
Because you've got time."
He keeps telling me, "You've got time."
But I don't believe him
"You've got time."

I keep on pushing harder
I keep on pushing farther away
But he keeps telling me, "Baby,"
He says, "Baby, yeah."

Yup, it's Liz Phair. Posted here perhaps in honor of her reappearance as a live performer at the Black Orchid at Pipers Alley (whatever...). Not that I am going. Not that I want to go, because, as Jim DeRogotis eloquently cranked in the Sun-Times about her current output of "adult contemporary radio pap a la Sheryl Crow" (whose lyrics I would never post publicly even though I've been known to touch a couple at Karaoke):

My God, what happened to this woman's self-esteem, let alone her brains? What possibly could have inspired one of the sharpest songwriters of her generation to turn to writing such utterly banal crap?

I know who's a Polyester, Sarah McLaughlin-ized Bride.

Move Over

"I like to use the expression 'to get out of your own way'...if I get out of my way, I won't make any mistakes, I won't have any regrets, I can do something I believed I could do but didn't know I would do. I find that works for me in film, and it works for me in life."

--Bill Murray, 2004

Stedman Rocking All Night Long

Today as I pulled a tab off the number ticker at the Italian deli, the one at the base of the Hancock Tower, and was salivating over the kind of sandwich I would select today, something nearly as huge as Big John loomed next to me; a shadow was thrown across the case of caprese salads and cannolis.

[Dum-dum-DUM!]

Yep, it was Stedman. Yes, that Stedman, Oprah's...uhhhh...boyfriend? Beau? Life partner? Swain? Sweetheart? Paramour? Intended? Permanent Fiance? Lover?

Whatever.

The man is...enormous. Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man-sized. (and it's clear, isn't it, that there's an entire generation that remembers 1984 in blinding clarity and that will employ this form of measurement, thanks to Aykroyd, Ramis, et al).

A teeny-tiny woman backed into him, and, once she peered upward and saw who it was, murmured his name, mesmerized (and it's clear, isn't it, that I am embellishing the story for blog-effect).

Then Stedman, the Most Useless Man in America, proved he's still the winner and champeen of that title by continuing to wander around L'Appetito in his gray Armani, scraping beige-colored gelato out of a cup and carrying some papers and a folder of some kind. Finally, he settled, alone, at a small cafe table, and continued to scrape-scrape-scrape and to stare into space. Or, rather, into Earth's upper stratosphere, because that man is HUGE.

Meanwhile, in Africa, Oprah continues to nurse starving children back to health with soccer balls and copies of "O" Magazine and chicken-salad sandwiches while supervising the construction of huts custom-designed by Nate.

What else is a Permanent Fiance to do, then?

Just Look Above.

Maybe it's the way the evening sun slants through the longest day of the year, gilding the delicate under-wings of a gull that's wheeling over street grit and spilled tacos, and ambitious spires and useless billboards, hothouse condos and bitter minds that reminds: when a waterside bird can soar like that overhead, there's something bigger than this city.

Pass the Dutchie: An Ultimate Where-Are-They-Now List

Add names, or identify current whereabouts...

Cracker
Duncan Sheik
The Smithereens
Pure Prairie League
Voice of the Beehive
Howard Jones
Primus
Ric Astley
The Romantics
Right Said Fred
Robbie Nevil
The Jungle Brothers
Simply Red
The Bangles
Suzy Q
Was (Not Was)
Poco
Toad the Wet Sprocket
C+C Music Factory
Timbuk 3
Marcy Playground
Jellyfish
Jody Watley
Slade
Taylor Dayne
The Dandy Warhols
Nina
Go West
Bad Company
Sir Mix-A-Lot
Skid Row
The Fixx
Elastica
Jamiroquai
Morris Day and the Time
Blind Melon
Stereo MCs
Fishbone
The Housemartins
Dead or Alive
Fastball
The Divinyls
Leo Sayer
The Motels
PM Dawn
The Plimsouls
Royal Crescent Mob
Dexy's Midnight Runners
Lisa Loeb
Falco
The Cranberries
Little River Band
Faith No More
The Blow Monkeys
Paper Lace
Bronski Beat
Fine Young Cannibals
The Georgia Satellites
Walt Mink
Martika
Victoria Williams
Soul Asylum
Gary Wright
Ozark Mountain Daredevils
Johnny Hates Jazz
Eddy Grant
The Dream Academy
Frente
Kajagoogoo
Rockwell
Superchunk
Prefab Sprout
Bettie Serveert
The Fall
Yaz
Eddie Murphy
The Cult
Lloyd Cole
Better Than Ezra
Charlie Sexton
Gin Blossoms
Scandal
Joe Walsh
Billy Ocean

"My Mind is Filled with Radio Cures"

Funny how some songs or albums suddenly become the soundtrack of your life. You have to hear them in sequence, you have to hear them when it's way too late to be up but okay, just track 3 one more time while you empty your bulk email folder again, when you've been driving nowhere, really, a continuous Grand Prix of Western, Chicago, Wabansia and Ashland, when you've been in the car parked outside for, God, was it really two hours, when you're peering up to the broken clouds above Big John downtown and trying to remember if it's toothpaste or cotton balls you need at Walgreens. You have to hear them in the morning, and and fuck it if you're gonna be late for work again, and then, once at your fluorescent desk, Media Player unspools the soundscape your life's become for nine hours, docked under a spreadsheet you can't ever seem to finish.

But way, way beyond the urgency of listening is the fact that holy shit, how could he have written this song and known me-when he doesn't know me? And the guitar crescendoes at the precise moment I need to think of what I long to think of but shouldn't, and my eyes close at the gentlest piano bridge, and the whispering coda makes my fingers curl like I'm holding someone's hand in mine. Maybe I etched the lyrics myself while in that moonlit, half-awake moment of clarity just before falling asleep.

***

We went to see Wilco at the Vic Wednesday night. It was honestly one of the best shows I have ever seen, not just because they played over two hours and over 25 songs. I am not relinquishing the top spot to Tweedy et al because I love other shows for other reasons from other phases of my life. (Crowded House, 1991; Replacements, 1991; Beastie Boys, 1998; Erykah Badu, 2001) Let's say it's the best show now--but still damn close to the top.

What was amazing about the night was the feeling that every single human in that theatre really, really wanted to be there, and embraced every song with the same yearning, attuned precision with which the band played. We all had a huge crush on each other. I mean, I was drinking dregs from a stack of 5 cashed beer cups during the third encore, and I still felt it.

Tweedy's face is heartbreaking. It's boyish and hurt and fierce and doughy. A heart laid bare.

The soaring and aching of sex and the crashing and burning of love. The delicacy of a rose petal. A mosaic of sound created with almost painterly detail, layer after layer, each brush on the high-hat and feedback howl deliberate--and free.

***

Picking apples for the kings and queens of things I've never seen
Oh, distance has no way of making love understandable

***

How can this not score my daily walks and thoughts?

There Ain't Much to Rake Anyway in the Fall

"A person can work up a mean, mean thirst
After a hard day of nothing much at all..."
--P. Westerberg

CTA: Take It!*

We came up with some new expansions of the CTA acronym:

Coming Tardy Always
Crap Transportation Administered
Crooked Transit Action
Corrupt Thieving Administrators

and

Cut This, Assholes

*I did not create nor appropriate this phrase. Mars and Kerri said their friend said it, and it was funny.

Not for the Feint of Heart

I noticed something during Karaoke Thursday last week: How come when my theatre/performer- type friends get up to the mike, we just…well, sing? And when the other 98.125% of the urban out-on-a-Thursday-night population yowls and warbles up there, it’s complete with ass-shaking disco moves, or Korn-style microphone management (cord wrapped around arm, right leg braced front), or Mick Jagger cock-strutting. I am fully aware that I clutch the mike stand like it’s the last paddle on the Titanic and just FOCUS ON THE WORDS. And those other people, they perform it. We, we just…plant it.

A Final Rose Is Not a Final Rose: The Anti-Bachelorette

I watched the live “After the Final Rose” finale of the latest installment of ABC’s The Bachelorette on Monday night. (To the peanut gallery: Let he who is without reality-show sin cast the first remote control…) Jen Schefft is a sweet-faced blonde from Chicago—it makes sense she is an event planner/public relations professional. Jen’s just the right combination of Midwestern practicality, 21st century assertiveness, and feminine acquiescence, with her soft voice, wide eyes and determinedly set jaw. I can practically see her tossing her hat on the plaza in front of the Hancock Tower, just like Mary Tyler Moore in Minneapolis thirty-five years ago, as well as extolling the benefits of upgrading to premium-quality sashimi for your next trendy cocktail event.

But Jen became the reluctant Bachelorette that night, not only dashing her swains’ hopes for a happy ending (and lucrative bottom-feeder celeb career and plenty of airtime on Extra!), but probably pounding the final nail in the coffin of ABC’s Monday night True-Love juggernaut. The bloom is off the Final Rose, folks.

"I just want to make sure that we do it right,” she vowed after turning down her second televised proposal, from Jerry. Runner-up John Paul was dissed and dismissed just before, in the first hour of the program, previously recorded in the New York penthouse or rooftop or wherever the final showdown occurred (I didn’t watch it since I couldn’t fast forward or Tivo through the lame—I mean lamer—parts. I cannot afford that kind of convenience).

Seeing him Monday night before a live audience after being (ostensibly) apart for the last several months, Jen rejected Jerry, an LA art dealer who actually appeared to be a wee bit too canny to appear on a reality dating—well, marriage--show, AGAIN. The newly terminated couple perched uncomfortably next to each other and gamely answered chuckleheaded questions from host Chris Harrison, who’s about as much a non-entity as you can get this side of a black hole, yet who still managed to feign enough surprise at the break-up to garner a Daytime Emmy nomination. If only the show was on before 5pm.

Then Chris turned the True Love Inquisition over to the audience. The first questioner was visibly perturbed with her Bachelorette’s decision (or non-decision). “I mean, what is it going to take to satisfy you, Jen??” she demanded, quivering under her carefully-chosen Banana Republic outfit.

That’s right, how dare she? Doesn’t she know you can marry someone you select from a group of bleached-teeth TV suckups you’ve romped across NYC with for six weeks?

“You can’t make yourself fall in love with someone,” Jen parried, both to the irate Bachelorette fan whose faith in True Love she had trampled, and to ex-almost-fiance Jerry. “You know that, don’t you?” she implored the sucker. Ever-suave Jerry was at a loss for words.

Chris alluded to the rumors swirling that Jen has been dating her boss, who turns out to be Chicago nightclub impressario Billy Dec (who has to have the most asshole-sounding name I have ever heard, ever). Jen demurred with enough shock to give Chris a run for his money in the Daytime Emmy race. "I'm not dating anyone," she remonstrated, widening those already-wide eyes, not even her first TV-fiance, the Tire King of San Francisco (also with an a-hole name), Andrew Firestone.

The first domino to fall in this go-round, eager-faced John Paul from Oklahoma City, told the cameras after his own sucker punch, "I think Jen made a mistake. I think six months from now she'll regret it. Jen's going to wake up, she's going to be 32 and [still] looking for a husband... looking for someone she knew was there and passed up, and it will be too late at that point."

Oh my God, the horror! She still might be single at 32, and thereby well on the way to a hairy chin, a bus pass, and 15 cats in a frowsy one-bedroom apartment in a Sheridan Road highrise.

Jen, let me have a moment with you, girl-to-girl: You are my new hero. By rejecting the Harry Winston engagement pabulum they offered you, in your own sweet, blond Kelly on 90210 way, you told the omnipotent architects of reality TV, millions of True Love brainwashees, and the ABC network (and hell, probably FOX too) to shove that Final Rose up their arses.

Maybe you should have stayed in Chicago and conducted your Husband Search from barstool at John Barleycorn. It's sad, but you might have had better odds.