Mentor is a city in Ohio

    Too much of my stuff is cringingly confessional. TMI, as the kids say. But believe it or not, there are actually pieces that I write, then decide are too personal to share. Such as this one, written half a year ago. But then time passes, I need something, and I figure, "Oh fuck it, why not?"

     "I'm sure the young people at the paper must look up to you," my mother said. "And you mentor them."
     I paused. And smiled. A weary kind of smile. Then immediately became lost in a memory from high school. Sophomore year, I hope. So say I was 16, which makes your mother picking out your clothes for you less bad. But I was wearing what she would refer to as "an outfit." Bluejeans. A matching jeans vest. And some kind of western shirt a color I can still see. Sort of a burnt orange. I wore it, and came home, and my mother said, in 1977.
     "Did the kids at school like your outfit?"
     And I remember pausing, struck, 46 years ago. Then smiling, slowly, I imagine that same weary kind of smile. Marveling, really, that my mother imagined I lived in a world where that could conceivable happen, and not my actual high school, where students got into brawls and one threw a teacher through a window. Perhaps some version of Archie comics, with Reggie and Jughead waving as I pull up in my converted Model T with a raccoon's tail on the aerial and school cheer slogans soaped on the doors.
     "Hey Neil, those are some rad threads!"
     "Why thank you Bettie, my mother picked them out for me."
     I don't know how I answered. Probably something terse, "No ma, of course not. People don't even lift up their heads so I can say hello." This was back when employees still went into the office on a regular basis. Though I realize that quality, that expectation, must live in me as well, which is unfortunate, because it has been an engine of disappointment.
     As for the young people at the paper, there is nothing knowledge-based I can say.  Years ago, when people would ask me what the mood at the paper is, I'd say, "There aren't enough people to maintain a mood." Now there are more staffers, enough for a frisson if not a mood. But scattered, and I'd never presume to imagine what they think about anything. You'd have to ask them. I sure wouldn't. My confidence isn't high. I  remember how it was when I was a young reporter, and how I viewed the old fogeys with lip curling contempt. Larry Weintraub, getting a tattoo of a quill pen and ink bottle on his bicep — because he's a writer, see? — and wearing short-sleeved shirts with the sleeves rolled up, a la Bob Fosse, to show it off. Cringe. The "Weintraub's World" columns where he worked for a day as a dishwasher, or a circus clown, or was dipped in pudding. It seemed the worst trivialization of the lives of working people. At least it kept me from ever doing that sort of thing myself. Long gone.
     I did admire some of my elders — Roger Ebert and M.W. Newman, and Irv Kupcinet. I remember arguing with people who didn't extend to the latter what I considered the proper respect. "Don't you understand? He once got in a brawl with Dizzy Dean and the starting lineup of the St. Louis Cardinals in the lobby of a Florida hotel in 1935? Harry Truman would call him on the phone and ask him to keep an eye on his daughter when she was in town. Clark Gable would go to parties at his apartment in East Lake View."
     But I saw how the rest viewed him, with a "Why is he still here?" smirk. In my heart I agreed with them. He had reached his sell-by date, but there he was, still the shelf, covered in mold. Nobody was buying it anymore.
     Why am I still here? Not mold-covered, I hope. But picking off bits of brown growing here and there, a losing battle. Why? A good question. I suppose for the same reason anybody is anywhere. I got hired once, and here I am, trying to do the best I can with what I've got until somebody or something makes me stop.

     

           

Flashback 2007: He can't Trump us — It's hard to believe Chicagoans could really fall for The Donald's nonsense

     Roseanne Barr is an alarmingly stupid person. She hasn't always been that way — I remember her original appearance on Johnny Carson, when she was a rare blue collar female voice cracking wise about her life. Her first show was pretty good too.
    But obviously the years have not been kind to Roseanne Barr. She managed a comeback, and was starring in ABC's No. 1 show in 2018 when she sent a tweet suggesting that Michelle Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett was the progeny of an ape. ABC canned her faster than soup. At the time, I saw it as a cautionary tale about the importance of professional public relations.
    She doesn't have a career to ruin anymore, but is still saying astoundingly stupid things ... her latest gaffe, well, it's too idiotic to describe. Google "Roseanne Barr" and "holocaust" if you want the details. It made me wonder what I've written about her in the past and I noticed this — ANOTHER column mocking Donald Trump YEARS before he decided to inflict himself upon our nation as its president. It doesn't predate my first jab, in 2000, but being from 2007, it's worth sharing, as a reminder that I understood 16 years ago what too many people STILL can't figure out. I've kept the column's subheadings.

Opening Shot

     That Donald Trump sure has gall. After he voided the contracts of those unfortunates who bought early in his condo tower project at Wabash and Wacker, pointing at a hidden line of legalese to yank back the units he sold them and snatch their profit, I assumed it would be a long time before he'd dare set foot in this town again.
     Yet, there he was, in the flesh, trying to lure more dupes to buy, hoping they'll ignore his reneging on sales to the first group.
     Does the Trump name really confer status? In New York, maybe, where they're trained to wait behind red velvet ropes and gawp at minor celebrities. But it's hard to believe that Chicagoans fall for that nonsense. Living in a Trump Building is like driving a Hummer — a lunge at status that indicts more than it elevates.

But they are home...

     Certain subjects rarely get in this column — divorces, for instance. They are inevitably what I call "a dog's breakfast" — a complex jumble of messed-up stuff that would take an enormous amount of effort and energy to make sense of.

     The immigration bill is the same way. At first, I thought, aha, at last, a bipartisan agreement! But the more you look at it, the more it seems a hodgepodge that really doesn't accomplish anything.
     Instead of worrying about the bill itself — which probably will go nowhere, at least in its current form — let's take a moment to glance at the two main alternatives.
     First, there is the "send-'em-back" fantasy. No responsible person actually believes that all 12 million illegal immigrants should be rounded up — held in concentration camps, perhaps — and then shipped back to Mexico.
     But that dream underlies much public opinion. It lurks behind those lashing out at "amnesty." They were wounded somehow, in their past — maybe someone once peed in their alley, maybe they were awakened by a loud car stereo, maybe someone once tried to speak Spanish to them, and they were frightened, and the fear stuck.
     Sending illegals home being impossible, those who find the idea appealing instead tacitly endorse a second route: doing nothing:
     Forget that we've already been doing nothing, for years. Forget that doing nothing leaves us with an enormous underclass of noncitizens who can't vote and have only limited legal rights.
     Which leads us back to the bill. Maybe it'll work, maybe we'll find a new compromise. But we need to do something. Because we've tried nothing and it doesn't work.

Today's chuckle:

     In time for Memorial Day, a tribute to vets, from Roseanne Barr: 

     Vietnam vets, I have a lot of empathy for them. They had to go to a horrible place and perform a hideous job for people who didn't even appreciate it.

     I know what that's like; I used to be a waitress at Denny's.

             —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 27, 2007

Flashback 2013: Hello, I’ll be your flu for today . . .

     A lot of illness going around: flu, COVID, RSV — that last one being some kind of lung infection. Whatever it is, I went to get the vaccine Wednesday night. Nothing worse than a sore arm. I'm taking some vacation days from work, but sick or well, I'll still be posting here, a rigor that didn't start with Every goddamn day, but led to it, as this column reminds us. It ran back when the column filled a page, and I've kept the old headings — and the part about going to the opera, a reminder of a lost world.

     Being a workaholic (God, both a workaholic and an alcoholic — I should get some kind of prize) my first thought, when I suspected that the flu jamming emergency rooms and scything through offices is knocking on the side of my head, was to get this written, quick, so I can collapse in a corner and hope to be better 48 hours from now.
     Sure, I could just call in sick, but calling in sick is for the weak; I hate doing that — you’re not in the paper, you might as well be dead; besides, in most offices the present sit around plotting the demise of the absent.
     Plus, it might not be the flu; maybe it’s just some cosmic hand that has reached into my skull, snatched out my brain and is squishing it before my eyes, grey matter oozing through its fingers. Not a terrible feeling, really; a dizzy exhausted numbness. This must be what stupid people feel like all the time.
     Thank goodness I have a few housecleaning topics I’ve been meaning to put in the paper, which shouldn’t demand too much brainpower to relate, or to read, and will keep me in your I hope unflu-flummoxed minds until Friday, when I plan to be better.

Opera winners off to swell nite

     Speaking of Friday . . .
     The Sun-Times is a do-it-yourself kind of place. Not a lot of meetings or memos. No legmen, rare secretaries, certainly none for me, few interns — I’ve never asked anybody to fetch me a cup of coffee in my entire career, frankly because there was never anyone around who I was confident wouldn’t reply, “Get it yourself, you pontificating baboon.”
     Thus when a rare situation arises where I have to depend on other people, it makes me nervous that they will actually hold up their end of the bargain. A trust issue, I suppose.
     Such as my Sun-Times Goes to the Lyric Opera contest — 100 lucky readers and I will enjoy “Hansel and Gretel” this Friday at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, with a pre-party at the Rittergut wine bar nearby.
     With the date looming, you can imagine my relief when I got this email from a reader.
     “I am over the moon thrilled,” wrote Lisa Cristia, a Chicago massage therapist, who said she has been in the opera house, kneading a diva, but never actually seen an opera. She’s taking her mom, Darlene, who has never seen an opera either, but adds, “it’s one of those events that you should have on your bucket list to do at least once in your lifetime whether you are an opera fan or not.”
     That it is. I am happy she is excited, but even happier that she was notified. So thanks to Kristen Davis and all the other Sun-Times marketing folk who handled the heavy-lifting. I appreciate it. And congratulations to the 50 winners and their guests. See you Friday.

Correction

     Whenever our digital future is discussed, the typical reaction is to bemoan what will be lost — no folded newspaper tossed at the end of the driveway every day, no chance to shuffle curbward each morning to sample the weather, to dip your toe in the day ahead.
     That’s true enough — the brief stroll is always infused with optimism. But there are advantages to the electronic, the central one being the correction of errors: bam, they’re fixed. As opposed to the typical print way to address significant goofs: run a correction and hope people see it. A hastily applied bandage, at best — the error was given bold play, while the correction is coughed into a fist long afterward. I tend not to run them much, first because I, ahem, tend not to make them, and second because space in print is limited, and I am reluctant to shave off what I’m writing today to revisit some past blunder.
     But being sick, this is an ideal day.
     A few weeks back the phone rang — it was Ald. Ed Burke; no, make that “long-serving alderman” Ed Burke; no, rather, “the longest serving ever” as he informed me, having taken office on March 11, 1969, a date that found me in Miss Maple’s fourth-grade class.
     He was not sharing this information out-of-the-blue, but because, in a column gingerly seizing one Ald. James Cappleman (46th) between my thumb and forefinger and holding him under a bright light for his pigeon fixation, I had wrongly written Ald. Dick Mell (33rd) is the “longest serving alderman” (in my defense, I was listing aldermen off the top of my head, so checking seemed unfair).
     Anyway, in my blubbering, yes-sir-alderman-so-sorry effort to apologize, I told Burke I would run a correction, and then promptly forgot about it, until Mell himself, not satisfied at inflicting one relative, son-in-law Rod Blagojevich, on the world, made news applying political lube to ease his daughter, Deb, into his seat. Not her fault; she seems a good egg, and if my dad could name me to some pantheon of 50 well-paid writers who get to make speeches and send staff for coffee, I’d likely tell him to go ahead, though with a bit more guile than Mell is capable of.
     Anyway, the Sun-Times and I regret the error.
                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times, January 9, 2013

Hat in the ring

 

 

     Do people even use the phrase "throw your hat in the ring" anymore? I imagine not, since they don't really wear hats anymore, not ritualistically, and those hats, more often than not, are some cheap fleece job, as opposed to something of quality and substance.
     That's what gave the phrase its meaning. To throw one's hat into the ring — sometimes quite literally, into a boxing ring — meant you were committing yourself to something. Why? Because your hat was there, in the ring, or wherever, and your hat was not only perhaps the most expensive thing you owned, but it had been chosen and molded and formed to match your personality. Where it went, you went, and vice versa.
     A month ago I was downtown, and stopped by Optimo Hats in the Monadnock Building for the pure joy of standing in the store, a glorious jewelry box of a place displaying hats that are luscious and finely crafted. The master was there, Graham Thompson, and we got to to talking. When I encounter people I automatically assume they don't know who I am, have never read anything I've ever written and don't care to start. But Graham actually read my book, "Hatless Jack" and remembered it — there aren't many books looking at men's hats as a socio-historical lens through which to understand culture. Just mine in fact.
     Did I know, he asked, that he had written a book. I did not. He bestowed one upon me, a lovely coffee table book. I began to read it — gorgeously written, an ode, not so much to hats, as to the lost art of craftsmanship, to appreciation of things of quality, increasingly rare in this mass-produced, use-it-once-and-throw-it-away world.
     I closed the book, excited to read it cover to cover. And then a month went by. Whatever I was doing, it wasn't reading Graham's book. Which is a lapse, on my part. So the purpose of this post is to throw my hat in the ring — I'm not going to let another month go by. As a book author, I know how frustrating it is, waiting for someone to read my damn book. So by ... Valentine's Day, I'll have it read and a column in the paper. Feel free to hold me to that and hound me if I don't. My apologies for the delay. I find sometimes the thing you want to do the most is the thing you never get around to doing.

Meh microphones are not the Chicago way

     “What’s this? This car? This stupid car?” John Belushi’s Joliet Jake demands, early in “The Blues Brothers,” having just been picked up from prison in a beat-up old cop car by his brother Elwood. “Where’s the Cadillac? The Caddy. Where’s the Caddy? The Bluesmobile.”
     “I traded it,” Elwood says tersely.
     “You traded the Bluesmobile for this?” Jake says, aghast.
     “No, for a microphone,” says Elwood.
     “A microphone?” Jake replies, incredulous. Then he pauses to think. “OK,” he concludes. “I can see that.”
     Of course he can. Microphones are important. And cool. And Chicago. The nation’s preeminent microphone company, Shure, has been based here for 99 years. Under the radar, since microphones are the unsung heroes of the electronic age. Even though every phone call you make, every note of every song you hear, every desperate demand put to Alexa, is conveyed through a microphone. They matter.
     Thus is it made me wince to see another important, cool and very Chicago icon, urban historian Shermann Dilla Thomas, do his TikTok videos holding this tiny little microphone between his thumb and forefinger, like a man about to pop a peanut into his mouth. Sometimes it was just the wire from earbuds. Thomas is 6-foot-5. The microphone looked dinky.
     I said nothing. For months. Shutting up is an art form that requires practice. People don’t take criticism well, no matter how nicely couched. I’ll read a colleague’s story and think, The lede is in the sixth graf. But say nothing. There’s no point. The story’s printed. They wouldn’t fix it; they’d just hate me.
     But Thomas’ work is ongoing. And he obviously cares about what he does. So how could I sit here, silently judging him, with the solution at hand? I had to make an effort. First I reached out to the Shure folks and acquainted them with the situation. They nodded happily. Then I messaged Dilla. “I hope I’m not being presumptuous,” I began. “But lately, watching your videos, I had an odd thought, ‘He needs a better microphone....’”

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'A really great picture keeps beginning'

 

     Lunch last week was originally set for Tuesday. But my friend asked if we could bump it to Wednesday. No problem. Although I was meeting my younger son and his beloved for dinner at Miller's Pub. Both meals taking place in the city. Meaning I'd have to figure out something to do with the hours between lunch and dinner. Again, no problem. There was always The Art Institute. Or the Museum of Contemporary Art. Or sitting by the fire in the Cliff Dwellers Club.. I considered having coffee with a friend, but that seemed like over-scheduling. In the end, I decided to just not worry about it; something would present itself. And if it didn't, I tucked a cigar in my pocket in case I needed to just stand somewhere, killing time.

Bad form? Discuss among yourselves.

     The lunch friend was artist Tony Fitzpatrick, who is no stranger to EGD readers. For years we met at Dove's, and revelled in their fried chicken. But we are men of a certain age with  vintage, Eisenhower-era hearts to consider. So we've shifted to Yuzu on Chicago Avenue, which is no hardship. Excellent sushi, which I took a picture of, to Tony's displeasure. "So you're one of those guys..." he said, reproachfully. Yes, yes I am. I'm surprised I have any friends at all. 

     We caught up over lunch — he's off to Costa Rica soon on a bird watching expedition. How fun does that sound? I'm plodding away, digging a hole that fills up by next morning, ready to be dug again. At one point he said he had to go back to his studio and finish a painting, and I, with nothing better to do, volunteered to come along and watch. Did I worry about intruding on the creative process? Yes I did.  I'd hate for a docent to pause in front of a glorious bird painting featured on a museum wall 100 years from now and say, "Scholars believe that this would have been Tony Fitzpatrick's masterwork but a forgotten journalist, Ned Stenborg, was there the day he finished it, throwing off his aesthetic sensibility in some ineffable way. His mere presence fucked the painting up!"

     But Tony didn't seem to mind, and we headed over to his studio on Western Avenue.

     The painting was "Chicago Kingfish (and the Women)" and someday its proud owner might enjoy knowing his treasure was completed on the afternoon of Jan. 3, 2024. If you're unfamiliar with Tony's work, his trademark image is a central painting of a bird embellished by all manner of found material, a collage frame, essentially. I watched as he used tweezers to apply tiny pink flowers, little colored dots and shiny silver squares, methodically handed to him by an assistant, Detroit artist, Owen Spryszak.

     "The thing itself presents a map of feeling," said Tony, as he worked. "I want there to be a flowery percussive rhythm to the thing." He's already put in the better part of a week on the painting.

     He took a tiny green chair from Owen with his tweezers, tried it out in three positions, sighed, placed it in four more, then put it back. 

He's right. Luxembourg Gardens

     "Why a green chair?" I asked.

     "All the ones in France are green," he said. "I started making these in Paris. In Luxembourg Gardens. All these green wrought iron chairs. Humboldt's got a few too."

     "I'm thinking of some music notes, kid," he said. "We're closing in on this."

     I asked him about the collage aspect. It obviously comments on and enhances the birds. 

     "The purpose of this stuff is never decoration," he said.

     Conversation ranged from ordinary stuff guys talk about to, unsurprisingly under the circumstances, art. I mentioned that a Facebook friend had posted something about how the world would be unbearable without art, and while I generally avoid getting into Facebook debates, I couldn't help adding Bernard Pomeranz's line from "The Elephant Man" as a refutation: "Art is nothing as to nature."

     "As beautiful as your birds are," I ventured. "They can't match actual birds."  Tony didn't argue, He was busy channelling his life, his experience, his vision into the painting set before him.   

      "There are more elegant collagists, better draftsmen," Tony said. But nobody who does what he does.  How does he know when a painting's finished?

     "A work of art fails when your eye stops," he said. "A really great picture keeps beginning." 

     I admired the jars of meticulously sharpened colored pencils — Tony took a straight edge and pencilled in a dotted blue line.

     "I think we're done here," he said. The blue tape came up. He held the painting at arm's length, regarded it a moment, then Owen whisked it away to be photographed and begin its journey to a collector's wall. We spoke of other things, and as dinnertime approached, I thanked him for an unforgettable afternoon and made my way to the Blue Line.

‘Melancholy is a vocation in itself’

Josienne Clarke

     Most of the music I listen to is 40 years old. Or more. Trying to keep even a little current, I started seeking out recent artists. One day Apple Music served up a song called “Chicago” by British singer/songwriter Josienne Clarke.
     Drawn by the title, I gave it a listen.
     Now songs about Chicago tend to be very specific. The classic 1922 “Chicago: That Toddling Town,” for instance, not only mentions a particular street — “State Street, that great street” — but Judy Garland’s version names a certain chic restaurant, the Pump Room, and exactly what she’ll be eating there: “On shish kabob, and breast of squab we will feast ... and get fleeced.”
     Clarke’s song is specific in its own way.
     “It’s not Chicago’s fault,” she sings, in a subdued, precise voice, “that no one came to see me play.”
     The moment I heard that line, I knew it had to be based on one very real experience. Nobody makes that up.
     So what happened?
     “That was the 17th of September, 2016,” said Clarke, when I caught up with her by phone at her home on the western coast of Scotland. “I had just signed to Rough Trade Records. One of the first things I did was go over to the States for a tour. We played New York, Boston, Philadelphia. We went into Canada, then to Bloomington, Indiana. Most of those gigs were fairly well frequented. Then we went to Chicago ...”
     To Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont Ave., a beloved Roscoe Village dive bar/jazz venue.
     To be honest, the room wasn’t completely empty.
     “It’s kind of a lie to say that no one came, because there was actually one guy in the back in a red jumper,” she said, using the British term for a sweater. “I feel bad every time I talk about this song and then play it. His whole experience at that gig, I have erased.”
     Then again, feeling bad is something of Clarke’s brand. Or as she put it: “Melancholy is a vocation in itself.”
     She sang her full set to the guy in the red sweater. Then she went to the bar, ordered a big whiskey, and thought about what had just occurred. Here she was, a professional singer with a music contract.

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Postscript:

Of course I reached out to Hungry Brain to see if anybody remember Clarke's 2016 show. A few days after the column ran, I received this:

Hey Neil,

Sorry for just getting to this now, this particular email fields booking requests in addition to many other things. Our archives evidently say I worked sound that night but I have no real recollection of the night. Shaina Hoffman and Ben Walker were also on the bill, 9 people in attendance in total. If you have an opportunity to modify your article please feel free to add that information!

Best,
Nolan

That doesn't necessarily contradict with Clarke's memory of one audience member — the other eight could have only attended the Hoffman and/or Walker shows.