Thursday, June 13, 2019

Flashback: 2009: Woodstock ruined my life

     Those hoping to throw a 50th anniversary Woodstock concert hit another snag this week, losing their upstate New York venue. Added to their loss of financial backing and of their production company, you'd almost think fate was trying to give them a hint: move on.
     No such luck. The Baby Boom has been clinging to and venerating their great moments of youth for decades and are carrying that practice into their senescence, a habit I decried at the concert's 40th anniversary. 

     Screw Woodstock
     Really, I mean it. If you're my age—I was 9 when the three-day concert took place—you noted the 40th anniversary of the key event of our culture's endless 1960s nostalgia by thinking, "Gee, have I really been listening to these goofs celebrate themselves for only 40 years? Because it feels like 400."
     Doesn't the self-regard and self-significance make you want to vomit? OK, 400,000 people gathered for a rock concert and didn't kill each other—big flippin' deal. Ten years later, in 1979, 1.2 million people showed up in Grant Park for a mass with Pope John Paul II, and you never hear them claiming it was a rend in the time-space continuum. Even more people are flocking to the lakefront for the Air & Water Show this weekend, and we don't act like it's some giant epochal moment—just another summer weekend in Chicago.
     Woodstock ruined my life, sort of. Imagine growing up, an impressionable child, watching all those supposedly pivotal 1960s event—Woodstock, the riots at the Democratic National Convention, the moon landing—on your parents' black-and-white Zenith TV in the living room of your suburban tract house in Berea, Ohio.
     It quickly gave the impression that we lived in Noplace, that life, the important stuff in life, was always going on Somewhere Else. That, by 1974, every significant thing that might conceivably happen had already occurred. I had missed the feast but was free to pick over the scraps, had missed the party and arrived for the cleanup, the dismal denouement of the 1970s, a miserable void of disco and leisure suits and meaninglessness, at least by the judgment of the people who had so much freaky fun at Woodstock while we were busy learning cursive.
     Doesn't it ever go away? How long must we gaze raptly at the enormous waddling rump of the Early Baby Boom? Forever? Not that we want our turn, no way—hard experience has made us better than that. Should anyone announce that, for instance, the 1977 World Series of Rock at Cleveland Municipal Stadium was an earth-shattering moment of bottomless significance, at least I'd have the honesty to say, "Hey, buddy, I was THERE, and it was just 90,000 teens guzzling wine out of botas and listening to Peter Frampton."
     How come nobody who was at Woodstock has the guts to say that? Nobody says, "You know, standing in a downpour, cold and hungry and listening to Alvin Lee wasn't really all that magnificent an experience. In fact, it was miserable, and it didn't mean a damn thing."

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, August 16, 2009

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Take cabs while you can or soon there won’t be cabs to take

Uber Eats delivery driver in Santiago, Chile this April. 

     Our flight to Chicago was delayed. So my brother and I retired to a wine bar next to the gate at the Denver airport and ordered the cheese plate. Conversation shifted to arrival home.
     ”Are you cabbing it or Ubering it?” he asked.
     ”Neither,” I said, delighted at the spontaneous riddle I had handed him.
     My brother chewed on this koan.
     ”Ohhh,” he said, realization dawning. I don’t believe he actually said, “Lucky man!” and socked me admiringly on the shoulder, but rather made some kind of appreciative sound I interpreted that way.
     My wife was picking me up. In this frenetic era of Snapchat and Lyft, we still cling to the tradition that you personally collect loved ones arriving at an airport. To not do so is a snub. If my wife were flying home and I told her to take a taxi I might as well make up my bed in the garage.
     This is habit, not law. As the flight delay stretched into evening and the weather soured, she messaged me, asking: do you mind getting home yourself? I did not, understanding her reluctance to be an after-effect of when I came home from South America. She had braved a mid-April blizzard to pick me up at Midway, an experience so harrowing we skipped the ritual glomming of a dozen donuts at Huck Finn’s and simply bolted home.


To continue reading, click here.

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

'Complaining is part of the fun'

   


     I wrote this last November but never posted it. I'm not sure why; maybe I didn't think it was up to snuff. Maybe it was simply overlooked. It's somewhat appropriate now, since the older boy is coming home this weekend, for Father's Day, after an absence of ... gee ... five months. Can't wait.

     "Let's play a game!" said my younger son.
     Something of a surprise. I had just finished making a big pan of stuffing.
     "Great idea!" I replied.
     The kitchen island was cleared. His older brother, who arrived about 1:30 a.m., was enlisted in the cause. The game we play, "Settlers of Catan," involves building roads, settlement, trading resources. A lot more fun than it sounds.
     We took turns, each rolling a pair of dice to determine which resources are handed out. We were playing at a kitchen island, and though we rolled carefully, occasionally a die would skitter off onto the floor.
      I rolled, and one die went over the side. On the table the die showed two—two "pips," actually. The black circles on dice are called "pips." The younger boy leapt up and read the die that had tumbled onto the floor.
     "Seven," he said.
     "Okay, nine," I replied, checking the board to see whether that rolled earned me any resources.
     "No," said my son. "The one on the floor is a five. The total is seven."
     "Of course," I said, smiling slightly.
     "There is no 7 with one die," my older son explained.
     I knew that. I know that a die has six sides, one through six. A piece of technology unchanged since Roman times. Amazing, really. But I expected him to read the dice, not add it to the two on the table, so when he said "Seven" I did the addition myself.
     Is there a lesson there? Maybe that expectations can trump our knowledge? Or maybe it's Thanksgiving, and I should just enjoy the game—which I did, and not just because I won, though that helps. I never win—and not think so much.
     There was a moment earlier in the day that I will always treasure. I was making the stuffing. The boys and their mom had been talking in the living room, but I lured them into the kitchen, by taking some of the challah I was cutting into croutons for the stuffing and making it into french toast instead. The family moved into the kitchen to enjoy some french toast.
     The topic was restaurants, with this or that establishment coming under close scrutiny. I wasn't really listening, and then a sentence cut through the kitchen clatter.
     "Complaining is part of the fun," my older boy said. I stopped what I was doing, dried my hands on my apron, and walked carefully around the island.
     "That's my son," I said, kissing him on the head.


Monday, June 10, 2019

Take up the straight man's burden....




     I thought it was a joke.
     A meme, some online wit.
     That’s how news often enters our awareness. As flashes on the horizon, something crouching at the corner of our field of vision. A hoax from the Onion perhaps?
     On the fourth or fifth glimpse: fine, a “Straight Pride Parade,” ha-ha, let’s take a look.
     Oh.
     It’s real.
     Sorta.
     Just a permit. Not quite the Parade of Roses, yet. But the internet is nothing if not a hothouse for every cracked notion that manages to poke out of the earth, warmed by concentrated attention and nourished by the scattered like-minded.A group in Boston has applied for a permit to hold a Straight Pride parade on Aug. 31. To push back against Pride parades and Pride Month, which seems a bigger deal this year, perhaps because of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.
     Why a Straight Pride Parade? A slap at Gay Pride, at all the underlings and those who support them by suggesting oppressed groups still exist.
     “For them, everything is based upon identity and whether or not one is categorized as a victim or an oppressor,” Straight Pride organizer Mark Sahady wrote on Facebook. “If you get victim status, then you are entitled to celebrate yourself and expect those with oppressor status to defer to your feelings.”
     There is a fragment of truth here — Democrats are big on identity politics, and that is a two-edged sword. We can celebrate uniqueness so much we forget the need to come together about anything.
     The solution is to find commonalities that include everybody. Someone who sincerely felt the unifying impulse parodied by Straight Priders would put their energies into stopping Donald Trump from commandeering our nation’s Fourth of July celebration and turning it into a celebration of himself. The 4th of July is, or was, exactly the kind of event that most Americans could get behind.

To continue reading, click here.

Sunday, June 9, 2019

‘Soulless’ sets out R. Kelly’s abuse of girls

       

     No kindness goes unpunished.

     The Sunday editor asked if I would read the new book on R. Kelly and, accommodating fellow that I am, I said I would. I wrote this after finishing my column Thursday, so if it strikes you as a little wooden, I agree. Not much gas in the tank when I set to the task, nor much time to polish the result.
    The above is known as self-awareness, and self-critique, with perhaps a bit of humility mixed in. A thing can be flawed even though I myself did it. 
    This blend of qualities I would heartily recommend to the author of "Soulless" who complained, several times and without charm, about the review below, because I suggest the book is not perfect. Spoiler alert: it isn't. 
    
    R. Kelly is a hometown hero in Chicago, an R&B superstar who grabbed the brass ring of fame and riches. His smooth, sexy songs are loved by millions, the soundtrack of countless weddings and barbecues.
     Or, at least, he was.
     R. Kelly can’t read. He’s a “crude man” who sometimes smells, from not bathing, and trolls suburban malls picking up teenage girls, whom he sexually molests, sometimes on video.
     Or, at least, he did.
     Both descriptions of Kelly are true, though the first image is finally fading in the glare of the second. The serpentine process, 20 years in the making, is laid out in “Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly” (Abrams, $26), a captivating if sometimes disjointed journalism procedural by Jim DeRogatis, former music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times.
     The book starts with an anonymous fax sent to DeRogatis just before Thanksgiving 2000. “I’m sending this to you because I don’t know where else to go,” it begins. “Robert’s problem — and it’s a thing that goes back many years — is young girls.”
     DeRogatis tosses the fax on a pile. But he returns to pull the thread, and the tale slowly unravels, taking on weight and momentum.


To continue reading, click here.

Saturday, June 8, 2019

What's the hurry to get to St. Louis?


Typical St. Louis residents commuting to work in 2019

     Today is "But St. Louis IS Boring Day" at one of my favorite neighborhood watering holes, Wrigleyville's Nisei Lounge. At least it was, back in the day. I haven't been there in many years, but still recall the simple pleasure of passing a Friday afternoon in its dim, modest interior with a cue in my hand, sucking back beer and trading observations of the world as pool balls clacked and the juke box played.
     After the below was published a St. Louis radio station phoned me, on air, and invited me to visit the city and see its wonders. Trying to avoid the trip, for reasons clear below, I said that I couldn't imagine going without my family. So they flew us ALL down, put us up in the presidential suite of the Adams Mark Hotel. We got the full treatment—to a Rams game and that Buster Brown kids museum. As we were ferried across the St. Louis Zoo in a golf cart for our VIP tour, my wife leaned into me, eyes glittering wickedly, and whispered, "Piss off Montreal next...."

     Amtrak wants to send 16 trains a day hurtling at up to 125 miles an hour from Chicago to St. Louis. Which begs the question: Are there 16 trainloads of Chicagoans who want to go to St. Louis every day?
     I doubt it.
     Don't get me wrong. If you somehow find yourself in St. Louis, as I have on six or a dozen occasions, there are things to do. Ted Drewes Frozen Custard. That train station mall. The Arch. The Budweiser Brewery Tour.
     I've done the beer tour a few times. Which underscores a vital truth about St. Louis: If London takes a lifetime to master, then St. Louis takes about three days, and after that you find yourself back at Budweiser again. It gets old.
     All told, that doesn't bode well for the idea of high-speed bullet trains flashing between the two cities. I mean, think about St. Louis. What adjectives come to mind? "Sleepy" is one. "Warm" is another. "Muggy," a third.
     St. Louis, by definition, is not a place one rushes to. Whether you get there in an hour or three hours or five hours or a day is pretty immaterial. The very fact that you are going to St. Louis at all shows you have time on your hands. Frankly, I think people would be more inclined to increase the time it takes to get there, not decrease it. They would rather take a flatboat down to St. Louis, twanging on a mouth harp while Huck poles the raft along the meandering Mississippi, than take a high-speed train. I would.  
A shot, beer and this lovely, spot-on t-shirt all for $12.
     High-speed trains work in the East because they connect New York City to places like Boston and Washington, D.C. Each city is filled with people who need to travel in a hurry.
     Running a high-speed line down to St. Louis would be like filling an inflatable kiddie pool with a fire hose—you can do it, but there's a tremendous sense of overkill.
      Frankly, the whole scheme smacks of those suburban mayors who, from time to time, announce that the solution for suburban commuting problems is the creation of a $ 5 billion Disneylandlike monorail system between, say, Oak Lawn and Carpentersville.
     Look at foreign cities connected by high-speed trains. Tokyo and Osaka. Paris and the French Riviera. There is no need to imagine why people in Cannes would want to zip up to Paris, just as there is no mystery as to why Parisians might want to speed down to Monte Carlo.
     But St. Louis? Sure, I can see people there wanting to come here, their Model-A Fords piled high with chicken coops and butter churns and sofas as they snake their dusty way up Interstate 55 to look for a piece of land where they can be farmers.
      That's a one-way trip, unless they give up, overwhelmed at the tall buildings and the fact that their cheerful "Howdy!" is met with puzzled stares. They can lope home to Grandma's kitchen on Greyhound. No need for a high-speed train for that.
     Beyond Missourians who can't cut it here, who else might use that train? A few Wash U alumni heading for nostalgic weekends. Half a bleacher's worth of Cubs fans on game days. Put them together and how many Chicagoans go to St. Louis on an average day? Five? Twenty? A hundred? Tops.
     The entire question is probably moot anyway, since the line would be run by Amtrak, and they have a hard time getting their regular old pokey trains from point A to point B. I can't imagine Amtrak trains reaching 125 miles an hour, unless they're derailing over a gorge.
     Back in the days when Eva Marie Saint ran into Cary Grant on a train in "North by Northwest," there was a purpose and a romance to cross-country trains. Now, sadly, they exist mostly for penny-pinching retirees and acrophobics. The towns along the route where Amtrak says it will be blasting its high speed Chicago-to-St. Louis Cannonball Express are concerned about the increased traffic. They needn't be.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 27, 2000

     

Friday, June 7, 2019

Ricketts not first owner to go to bat for Republicans




     So baseball fans are grumbling because Todd Ricketts, Cubs co-owner and finance chair of the Trump Victory Committee, is dandling GOP fundraisers at a party Saturday night in a little property of his called Wrigley Field.
     Reaction was swift and predictable. ”BOYCOTT THE CUBS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Jim McDonald demanded on Facebook. “Anyone who goes to Cubs games and spends money is actually supporting Trump. Who do you love more The Cubs or the future of the USA?”
     Oh please.   

     First off, the Ricketts family assumed controlling interest in the Cubs (it was too complicated a financial shell game to call it a “purchase”) in 2009. So the hefty profit off all those $10 beers have been funneling to right-wing causes for a decade. Odd that some notice only now, even claiming to shift their allegiance to the Sox, as if such a thing were possible.
     And remember from whom the Ricketts bought the Cubs: The Tribune Company. Not exactly Ben & Jerry’s. More like Fox News before the American Pravda was a gleam in Rupert Murdoch’s eye. Whether sneering at immigrants or urging isolation, the Trib was a foghorn of right-wing nuttery for decades, stretching back to the days when its owner, Col. Robert McCormick, began each morning licking the boots of Hitler.
     Yet fans still cheered Ryne Sandberg.

To continue reading, click here.