My quest to finish every crossword puzzle in the book has been diverted by the fact that I am unable to finish the first crossword puzzle in the book. It is Halloween tonight. Here is my far-sighted synthesis of what Halloween means to America in 2003:
Young Women: Dress like a hooker.
Young Men: Dress like a male hooker.
That is all.
Number of brown cows I had dealings with today: 1. I unintentionally walked through the Lincoln Park Zoo this afternoon during the increasingly frequent Wandering Around phase of the day. This is where I met the cow, who was as vocal as I’ve ever heard a cow. I’m not sure what her problem was but apparently I was either it or the solution to it, because she leered at me and mooed derisively four times, which caused the goats to bleat in response. The cow probably just wanted to eat my walkman or something but there was a fence preventing that from happening. Then phase 324 of my plan to waste as much of the rest of my life as possibly was carried out: I bought an entire book of NY Times Sunday crosswords. I will finish this entire book without cheating. Even if it takes me the rest of my goddamn life.
Re Whet’s hate for the Mavericks unis:
That silver shit is BROKEN. Broken. While drunk last weekend, I think I might have flown off the handle and spilled hate-filled gibberish about the aesthetic crime that Mark Cuban has committed by replacing the best uniform in the NBA with one of the worst. Their old logo was the letter M wearing a cowboy hat. How can you do better than that? Their new logo is a retarded marriage of everything that sucks about the aesthetic that I like to call “the ’90s future,” also known as the design trend that produced such terrible things as the Tennessee Titans’ current uniform, the Phoenix Coyotes’ mercifully shitcanned Southwestern-zesty look, the Vancouver Grizzlies, the Carolina Hurricanes, the Arizona Diamondbacks, and the newish Denver Bronco duds. Don’t get me started about the green and brass and maroon Grant Hill-era Detroit Pistons (thankfully gone) or the post-Laettnerian Minnesota Timberwolves, the absolute apogee of aesthetic hate crime in the sports uniform category. I cannot ever get over this. Their logo is a wolf’s head at roughly 8th grade intro to art level. In the background are some pine trees, to illustrate the “timber” portion of their nickname. And, this is the best part, half the wolf’s head is black and half is white, because lightning is striking, off-camera apparently. This is the dumbest thing anyone has ever done ever anywhere. Except for the whole our-logo-is-racist thing with the Indians. Which they’re working on. I stand by my promise to rename the Indians the Giraffes or the Trabers when I purchase them during the Ty Cobb/Nolty-ish living-on-pills-and-whiskey phase, currently scheduled to begin in 2038.
I’m not immediately sure where this thread is leading me. The new Cavs uniforms are OK. I was actually a pretty big fan of the old road uniforms, which had a dope font and a sort of ominous, we’re down with that 7′1″ Lithuanian guy in the walking cast over there vibe. And let’s face it, this Cavs team would look good in most any uniform. LBJ is starting to look like Sammy Sosa did before steroids ate his face. And Ricky Davis jumped off Steve Nash’s head last year. That looks cool. And you have your thuggish Dajuan-Darius leitmotif. And then you have Carlos Boozer, who invented being Kenyon Martin in the early late 90s. Which is to say, Carlos Boozer will be at the forefront of my PowerPoint presentation on eugenics entitled “everybody is going to look like Vin Diesel by the year 2050 and how this will impact your shit.” Moving down the list, you get Chris Mihm, who should add the tagline “THE Better-Looking Alternative to Wally Sczcerbiak” to his name. Then there’s the artist currently understood to be Z(ydrunas Ilgauskas), who looks like someone put Spud from Trainspotting through a malfunctioning fax machine and sent him to Cleveland bwo Vilnius. Then there’s the anachronism that is currently Kevin Ollie’s mustache.
ideas i had yesterday:
1. buy chili fixings from cub foods at midnight
2. sleep a bunch
3. make chili
4. get real drunk and fall asleep (pass out is the scientific term) while waiting for cavs game to come on
5. wake up at quarter to six in the morning (i guess this qualifies as today)
Step 3 (the chili) worked out pretty well. The following things were included in my chili: Slightly too much diced tomato. Some whiskey. Most of a can of beer. Half a can of sweet potatoes. $5 worth of chicken breast marinated in salsa. Most of an onion, sauteed. Minced garlic. The chicken does not play. If anybody wants some chili e-mail me. I will mail it to you Weird Al TV style, in a manila envelope.
Step 4 was sort of unexpected, to be perfectly honest. Now it’s 6:30 am on Thursday and i’m hungover and my knees are killing me and if you’re gonna pull this shit the least you could do is say you’re from the yankees.
12:23 p.m.
Made grilled cheese sandwich. The whiter cheeses turn sort of translucent when grilled. Big fucking deal
1:45 p.m.
Took a shower. Made AT&T call to the shirt bullpen for Dark Blue Plaid, LHP, 1 run 8 strikeouts and no walks with an ERA of 2.34 in 5 appearances this season after his call-up in mid-September. Lives at home in the closet with his life partner Dodgers BP Jersey.
2:25 p.m.
Left house (in Logan Square) with vague plans of walking somewhere
4:33 p.m.
Stopped walking at 435 N. Michigan Ave (not in Logan Square). Wandered around for another 20 minutes before giving up and going to work.
At the office:
I had the greek salad (large) from the mystery-shrouded “CND Gyros and Lounge” restaurant. It was kind of slimy. Then I was notified that I had forgotten to turn in a timecard for the last pay period. So that will be fun, when I don’t get paid the Friday after next. Oh for Christ’s sake.
Summary of walk from Kedzie & Lyndale to 435 N. Michigan:
I stopped at Walgreens in Wicker Park and got refreshments. I crossed two highways and one river during my walk. I did not find the Division Blue Line stop which was my primary objective, which is why I just kept going. I did find the Chicago Blue Line stop, which has many entrances, including one in the middle of the street alone on a island. I made eye contact with a black guy, a white guy, a hispanic-looking guy, several pets, one old lady, a homeless guy who was also looking at the giant herd of pigeons by a fountain, and the other guy who was crossing the dan ryan on the milwaukee overpass. I was briefly considering stopping to purchase shoes but decided against it. The vague plan i left the house with was to buy a book of New York Times sunday crossword puzzles and see how long it took me do finish every single one. I was thwarted in this endeavor.
other movies i have seen recently that featured neither stifler or the rock:
notorious
i fell asleep for most of the main scene., when the nazis have everybody over for cocktails. in a shocking twist, cary grant was always 45 years old, even when he was 40. and also when he was 65. weird. i wonder if he ever got tired of having his hair covered in axle grease. other than that, not sure what all the fuss was about here with this one. and the germans sure seem french to me. and the supposition that expatriate nazis in rio were going to undo the marshall plan with a few wine bottles filled with gunpowder frustrated me. the nazi mother-in-law is very convincing.
lost in la mancha
Sort of short and cheapo documentary about the abortive Don Quixote movie directed by Terry Gilliam. But it’s sort of interesting to see how out of control Terry Gilliam is, as a filmmaker. Not that this is absolute proof of it or anything. But it lends a lot of credence to my theory that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’s intermittent goodness is 100% the product of Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro and in no way related to Terry Gilliam. at any rate, worth seeing if only for the remnants of a scene where johnny depp swears at a fish repeatedly. i take that back. god damn it.
wonder boys
i wish someone had told me they made a movie about young nick tymoczko when it came out instead of three years later. and katie holmes, owwwww [dog barking]. yes.
this makes no sense. for those who care, i switched toothpaste brands again to tom’s of maine with baking soda. we’ll see how that works out. i also purchased some red vines licorice and a soda.
bonus deleted scene:
Grady Little + Tom Sizemore = Grady Sizemore. What does it all mean?
Reader’s Digest Condensed Lives
Pete Beatty, October 26, 2003
I mopped while Ben and Sam straightened the place up. I ate lunch. I took a nap. Hours passed slowly. I took a shower. I went to see The Rundown at the $3 movies. I had a sandwich. I tried to read more of that book but then I finally caved and started 13 Stories & 13 Epitaphs by William T. Vollmann. William T. Vollman is really, really good. I took another nap. We went to the gas station at Fullerton and Sacramento. I bought the weird guy outside a bag of chips. I drank V8. I read. I watched Ben play Internet boggle for an hour. Then I tried to write something and got bored. Now I am listening to the snapping at the beginning of “Jail Guitar Doors” over and over again. I talked to the cat for a while about her anger problem. Eventually I will close my eyes and play Internet boggle on the insides of my eyelids until sleep comes for me.
Oct 25
I guess I hope everybody had fun at our party. At some point tomorrow, I’ll reminisce to today and marvel at the fact that i was ready to fall over and sleep for a year starting at 6 PM at dinner and still, heroically, managed to finish getting drunk and stare quizzically at people i know while they tried to tell me stuff for eight more hours. as it turned out, i stayed in my weird beer- and-salsa-and-burrito-induced fugue state until the spring of 2006. I ate my leftover burrito outside because I didn’t feel like expending the effort required to not get tomato and cheese bits all over the floor. so I got them on the side walk instead. But apart from that i thought everyone conducted themselves nicely. I was proud of the fact that I didn’t spill anything on myself all night! Because I’m always spilling crap on my shirt. I’ve been getting a lot better about that recently. Way to go!
Oct 24
I played Internet boggle at work.
Enough of that crap. If anybody was wondering if it was a good idea to give someone $3 in exchange for being shown The Rundown featuring the Rock and Stifler, it is not. It’s not the worst idea, but definitely don’t give them more than $3. Whose goddamn idea was it to make a movie with the Rock and Stifler teaming up? There is also a weird-ass supporting performance by Spud from Trainspotting. And Rosario Dawson is sweaty a bunch. Which is hard to complain about but at the same time, if you have to bring out Perma-Sweaty Rosario Dawson, you’re probably pandering. I always liked Peter Berg because of his acting in The Great White Hype, a film that apparently was hated by everyone in the galaxy except for me. It’s not getting any easier to maintain an extremely casual Peter Berg advocacy program now that he’s made a second career out of directing terrible, terrible movies.
this is sort of surprising:
well, that’s validation for some people i know. i’ll be damned. i have to say i more or less expected Paranoid. But the VERY HIGH in Schizotypal, that’s a real shocker. I will point out that i’m not dependent at all! But I am OCD also. Oh well. I don’t feel crazy.
restaurant review!
Old Town Pub or something dumb like that, on wells in between north and division, maybe.
now, I’m no Anthony Bourdain over here, but let me just say that when I, Pete Beatty, order baked goat cheese, it should in fact be baked and not just be a wad of chevre floating in a mini-crock of Prego-quality tomato sauce with stale bread accompaniment. Not that I know what baked goat cheese is supposed to act like, or that I even have ever had baked goat cheese before. I chose the baked goat cheese over the “cheese fries from hell” so I guess you can indict me as a yuppie turd, as opposed to a drug-crazed transient. That’s what cheese fries from hell says to me. Also, while I’m at it, the waitress was wearing too much makeup. I suppose this is our own fault for going to the old town pub. Yes, yes it is. Also, you did not have pizza by the slice as promised in the window.
this is boring. uh, the marlins won. weird. who gives a shit. although: the whole ugueth urbina and ivan rodriguez kissing each other thing is pretty damn cool. it would be cooler if they subsequently held hands.
so i left a pen at work on tuesday, and it was left EXACTLY WHERE I left it. that is the tribune corp difference ladies and gentlemen.
Basically, the end result of this week is that I spent most of my team reading American Slavery, American Freedom because i found it in a box in my room and now i’ve been having weird dreams about barter economies and paying off my college loans in headrights and tobacco. And also i remembered why i hate scrabble: because i suck at it. on the plus side, the decision to buy scrabble last night did result in the acquisition of a shaving mirror.
also: anybody else freaked out by the fact that the fat bad guy from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure has gone full circle and is now playing john wayne gacy in a shitty direct to video movie? oh dear god that’s terrifying.
if anybody didnt get my email:
come to logan square on saturday night at whatever time you like for a friendly gathering of souls at 2237 N kedzie ave apt B, the buzzer is the vaguely futuristic one that’s separate from the other not-as-futuristic ones. it has adams beatty eccleston on it. the e-mail was funnier. if you are trying to get here from hyde park, take the blue line to california then make a left out the door of the station, then a right on to palmer, stay on palmer all the way to kedzie, make a right, then stop at the second of two green awnings just up the block. so there.
