"You go to work today
You'll go to work tomorrow
Shitfaced tonight
You'll brag about it for months
Remember what I did
Remember what I was
Back on Halloween
But what's in between?
Where are your ideas?
You sit around and dream
For next Halloween"
-Dead Kennedys 1982
On stage at the Subteranean, the band is putting Johnny Cash covers through an aggro-jock blender that is causing visible bodily illness in my companions. Rachel, Marcus and I are leaning over the balcony railing, which surrounds a square hole looking down on the dancefloor and stage. It is perfect for throwing warm beer, ice, and bodily fluids on the crowd of trashy dames and poorly costumed old rocker guys. It's one of those parties where you can't tell if some of the people are wearing costumes or not. Is that leather hat, spiked collar, and Harley Davidson tshirt that man's costume, and if so did he purposely skip washing his hair for three weeks straight in preperation for tonight?
"It reminds me of this 'dress-up like white trash' party I went to in Texas," Rachel says as she balances her plastic cup twelve feet above a pair of guys dressed like the Hanson Bronthers (the hockey players, not the 90's jailbait alt-pop group), "I was afraid to compliment people on their costumes because I couldn't tell who was dressed up."
At that moment, Willie Nelson on steroids jumps on stage and smashes an acoustic guitar against the ceiling. He glances around, unsure of a second course of action, then jumps back into the crowd. The band that played before this one slogged out bar-rock covers and wore beer boxes on their heads. You may ask why we stuck around long enough to have this historical perspective, but I'll be getting to that shortly. They also had a nearly nude go-go dancer who soaked her bikini in Oldstyle and wore a football helmet (good guess, but that's not why we stayed either).
As I grit my teeth through a _second_ plodding rendition of 'Ring of Fire", we try to identify her among the group of partiers who have escaped from the dance floor to the balcony level and are waiting in line to pee.
Downstairs, below the 'caberet' level, there is a hiphop lounge show taking place. We ditch the rockers for mellow lighting and two mc's acommpanied by live instrumentals. The bouncer lets us through because we paid for the upstairs show. He also didn't ID me when we showed up earlier that evening, leaving me with the fear that I might be losing my boyish good looks. The hiphop is alright, but i am not feeling it nearly as much as the table of blonde college girls who are rubbing their thighs and making eyes at the athleticly built black guy and heavy white guy who are rocking the mikes. The crowd down here is a decade younger and probably reads more books. We can't stay for two long though because the bastard sons of Hank Williams jr. are finishing upstairs and the next band is who we came to see.
Two years ago Andy Leech showed me this album liner featuring a fat white guy posing nude with a leather hat and a python. The title was 'Ass Cobra' and the name of the band was Turbonegro. In the next couple of years, most of my rock 'n' roll friends in Wisconsin got into Norway's favoritre denim-clad, over the top homorockers. The idea that someday there would be a Turbonegro coverband playing in Wicker Park and that I would spend Halloween 02 watching them breath fire and launch pyrotechnics out of their butt-cracks did not cross my mind. But that's exactly what happened. Before their set, while watching the bikini dancer try to drink beer through a football helmet, the singer confided in us that he was suprised anyone in Chicago knew who Turbonegro was. Despite this, the crowd seemed to enjoy the beer-belly shaking covers of 'Good Head', "Prince Of The Rodeo", "Rendezvous With Anus", and what ever else they played (every song they did was from the 'Apocalypse Dudes' album which I have only heard a couple times.) Everyone danced alot and threw beer and stared at the singer's ass. Between songs the band added funny Norwegian dialogue. So eat your hearts out Wisconsin kids.
The downside is I forgot to bring earplugs and now it sounds like there's a mosquito in my brain. I hope that goes away.
:: Ira
1:48 PM
[+] :: [comment/respond]
...
Latest construction update:
The resurfacing of North Ave is almost done. You may remember the felt strips that the construction guys tarred to the road. They've had to do it at least twice now, because we got buckets of rain that accumulated in the fabric and splattered grime all over my bike and the cuffs of my jeans, and destroyed the adhesive that was holding the long black strips to the road. Then the wind blew them out across the street like big pieces of tangled black electrical tape, and when it dried off the workers came back out with their tar and rollers and replaced them. The construction crews are relentless; a big arm of the city's machine and they will build and replace and roll over anything.
The strips are gone now because they have been covered with another two inches of smooth black asphalt. It's flush with all the manhole covers and metal junk sticking out of the road so no there is no excuse for me to not to flat out sprint all of the way from California to Milwaukee. Once again, my ass is in a catapult. The only thing touching the ground is the half inch spot on my super-slick tires. The Cermack Produce building crawls into fast forward as I pick up speed. Sleepy gangbangers and prostitutes bleed into blurry outlines as my speed increases, past Talman and Rockwell. The boarded up buildings and liquor stores form into a solid colored stripe on either side like Nascar billboards. I burn every stoplight between Rockwell and Western, spinning to warm up my legs against the fall chill. The air is antifreeze and gasoline exhaust, freezerburning my lungs like a pack-a-day habit, but my metabolism is so hot that I burn through the toxins until they are nothing but a cleansing sweat, saturating the skin under my thermal shirt. After Western the buildings are all pet salons, art galleries, and the harbinger of doom, real estate offices. Chicago's privileged young are pushing their way west, hot on the heels of the construction crews. Two blocks north of North Ave. is a wall of cheap brick condos with overwhelmingly identical tall windows and flat black balcony railings. All of this, I burn through like the Ghost Rider. Perhaps one day the flames from my wheels will spark a purifying blaze, destroying the oppressively bland facades in a traditional Chicago inferno.
Before I reach terminal velocity I am at the Milwaukee-North-Damen snowflake intersection and the race is over. I post over the pot holes and dodge groggy hipsters as they stumble into the street in search of cappuccinos and the Entertainment section of the Reader.
Addendum to construction update: Milwaukee Ave has been torn up between the bridges. It is like dental surgery, because one day it will look and feel great, but right now it is hellish and uncomfortable.
:: Ira
10:07 AM
[+] :: [comment/respond]
...
