Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Life back to normal, alas, for vaccinated

 


     The booths at Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Company on Clark Street are small. But the six of us jammed in well enough last Thursday night. True, when my napkin slid off my knee and onto the floor I only momentarily considered trying to somehow snake my hand down and reach for it — a physical impossibility — before simply asking the waiter for another.
     If you are unfamiliar with the Lincoln Park fixture, that’s because it’s not one of the behemoths of the Chicago pizza world, no Lou Malnati’s or Giordano’s. Here, you purchase not deep dish or thin crust pizza, but a sui generis concoction of cheese and dough baked into a bowl and flipped over. We usually skip it and make a meal out of just a salad and the parmesan-dusted Mediterranean bread — it’s that good. There aren’t many restaurants where you eagerly anticipate the salad dressing; this is one of them.
     But we had newcomers — our sons’ girlfriends — who of course had to try the pizza pot pie to achieve the Full Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Experience. Of the six, I was the odd man out. The professional status of the others were: one assistant attorney general for the state of Illinois, aka my wife; three recent law school graduates studying eight hours a day for the bar exam next week, otherwise known as my sons and Girlfriend B, plus Girlfriend A, still in her third year at NYU Law.
     You’d think at some point, while conversation flowed around the Rule Against Perpetuities, post-bar-exam trips and the tax benefits of living in New Jersey that somebody would turn to me and say, “What, are you not a lawyer?” But that would require more attention than a dad typically receives in these situations. I knew my job here was to keep my mouth shut and pay for everything, a task I performed admirably, if I say so myself. Although I did slip up once and begin to speak about reading literature, prompting my wife to immediately manage, somehow, to reach under the table and tap my knee, the international signal for, “You’re talking. Why are you talking? Don’t talk.”
     Otherwise, I was on my best behavior. Girlfriend A has been around for over a year, but Girlfriend B, a recent development, had never met us before. I withheld my natural question: “Why are you here? Are you crazy?” and instead asked, “Where did you go, undergraduate?” When she answered, “University of Southern California,” I nodded sagely and said the first thing to pop into mind: “Trojans.” Their mascot. That’s what I meant, anyway, not Trojans the brand of prophylactics, though I did instantly worry about my comment being interpreted that way, that I’d inadvertently said an off-color remark that would be joyfully seized by my sons and dangled in my face for the next decade. They didn’t seem to notice.

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9 comments:

  1. That joint is still around? It's a survivor. It was in the same spot when I lived and worked and played along the lakefront fifty years ago. WOW!

    At first I thought this was going to be a snark at entitled elitist yupsters who like to claim that black lives matter, and other minority lives matter, and working-class white lives matter, but who shrug when there are multiple gunshot wounds and gun deaths, because it doesn't affect THEIR easy lives..."Libs too busy living to care if you get shot"...I didn't see the "a" in the headline. Instead, I got a slice (pun intended) of post-plague family life. I was SO ready for the first story. Oh, well...maybe that's another story for another time...

    Let them throw away their lives out of ignorance, because there's no vaccination for that, and none for the plague of stupidity that is sending America straight down the poop chute. I don't mind being so rude as to observe that thousands will die. I just hope most of the dead if not all of them, are the anti-vaxxers, maskholes, and stubborn shmucks. Let them die. If enough of the Dumb Boys buy the farm (or the split-level), we might still be able to avoid the Second American Civil War.

    Abe Lincoln said that America could not be half slave and half free. Joe Biden should just say that America can be both alive and healthy, and sick and dying. And then start digging mass graves...unmarked ones. Pile them high, bulldoze them in, cover them over, and let the grass do its work. No monuments. no stones. No plaques. Maybe a flat stone with the number of bodies interred, like Gettysburg.

    Harsh? Tough toenails. The time for friendly persuasion is long past. Make everyone carry vaccination cards, and isolate and shun and avoid those who don't. No food, no shelter, no assistance, no healthcare. Each and every one of these covidiots has dug his or her own grave. Now...step aside and let the damn fools lie in it.

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    1. You make a good point about the headline; the story didn't run in the physical paper today, because of space (they said; or triviality, I feared). So I changed the headline for tomorrow's paper to one that can't be misconstrued, and is probably better. So thanks.

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    2. Oh, and since I decided to change the headline here, too, the one we're discussing was, "Libs too busy living to care if you get a shot."

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  2. I believe it was WLSs big John Howell that suggested trump remind his supporters he supported accelerated vaccine development, got the shot himself, and needs them to be alive to vote for him in the future.

    I suppose it's alot to ask of a cretin

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  3. Don’t get too used to maskless life. The Delta variant is spreading quickly, and we may all again have to take measures to protect the unvaccinated. Yes, many of them are agents of their own susceptibility, but some are children.

    It’s great while it lasts, though!

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  4. I have questions about the vaccine AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME FROM ASKING THEM! HOW DARE YOU TRY TO SILENCE ME!! I WILL CONTINUE TO QUESTION THE VACCINE AND I DON'T CARE HOW MANY GOVERNMENT LIBERAL ELITES TRY TO SHUT ME UP, I WILL NOT BE SILENCED AND WILL CONTINUE TO SPEAK ON BEHALF OF THE DOWNTRODDEN FORGOTTEN...

    Keep that up for about 22 minutes and you have another Tucker Carlson show.

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  5. A normal family meal, footsteps away from the scene of a horrific crime. In 1927 most Chicagoans agreed about the negative consequences of organized crime and blamed the actual perpetrators of the Massacre. Today, some republicans are endorsing the vaccines. But they are silent about the deaths their silence caused, while still giving The Cowardly Liar a pass for January 6, they are blaming Nancy Pelosi for the invasion of the Capitol. Like upside down pizza, ain't nothin' normal around here.

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    Replies
    1. The pizza joint is at 2121 N. Clark...the scene of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929 was across the street, at 2122. The garage is long gone, replaced by a high-rise for seniors. A Canadian bar owner re-assembled the pock-marked bricks in his men's room.

      My father drove me past the spot and pointed it out to me, when I was young and fascinated by gangsters and the Mafia and Al Capone. Thank you, Desi Arnaz and Robert Stack. Lost most of my fascination as an adult, when the Mob stories on the screen got too real,too graphic, and too violent. But as a kid, I knew more about mobsters than I did about Chicago's ballplayers.

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