Chicago - A Rant

     I hate Chicago.  I hate all things Chicago.  I hate the Bears, the Cubs, the Sox, the Hawks, and the Bulls.  I hate the food.  I hate the noise.  I hate the smells.  I hate the lakes.  I hate the architecture.  Chicago is a condensed metropolis with sprawling, disconnected suburbs.  The neighborhoods make little sense, and the people follow in suit, wandering from business to business with spectacular idiocy.  Chicagoans are the droll version of New Yorkers.  They offer none of the Midwestern pleasantries and possess all of the New York crass.  They’re bitter, angry, vengeful.  About what?  I haven’t the faintest clue.  Perhaps it’s the corrupt politicians.  Perhaps it’s the city’s ultra violence.  Perhaps the skyrocketing crime rates.  The CPD's ineptitude.  The bitter winters.  The short springs and even shorter summers.  Perhaps people are so calculatedly cold because they’ve been force-fed plates of marinated beef and cheese all their lives.  Mention a vegetable to a Chicagoan and you’re likely to go missing a tooth. 

    Chicago is as inexplicable as a city can get.  Best pizza in the world?  Hardly.  Since when is casserole considered pizza?  Where’s the best Italian beef?  Everybody has their own opinion, each one prouder and more arrogant than the last.  On one occasion, after a few too many, one bar patron claimed the best Italian beef was found at a little establishment called “Bruce’s Mighty Wings.”  It took everything in my power not to cut out his tongue and use it as currency to pay my tab.  In Chicago, subjectivity is considered fact and objectivity is considered weakness.

     I spent a year in Chicago and never once did I stop feeling like a tourist.  When I moved there I was overwhelmed by the strength of my wistful dreams, but tortured by the never ending sea of its disappointments.  I had convinced myself Chicago was the answer, a mecca to cleanse my rotten heart; a heart, unbeknownst to me, that had been sentenced to death and Chicago was its executioner.  I say to hell with the Man and to hell with Chicago!  To hell with those discombobulating city streets!  To hell with those faceless strangers eating their Italian beefs and thirty dollar casserole pizzas!  To hell with it all!

    The second city was--and continues to be--a hellish reminder of a life I had no business living.  Maybe I don’t hate Chicago.  Maybe Chicago hates me.  Either way, save yourself the headache and change course for Milwaukee.

Bill Withers Had It Right - A Rant

A note to the reader: Bill Withers is meant to be played LOUD.

Bill Withers is smooth as fuck.  He is the brass, the boss of all bosses.  Withers is the man about town who owns everyone and everything.  Anybody who can pull off a purple turtleneck has a leg up in this world.  He plays the guitar with these massive hands that shouldn’t fit the strings, but what comes out is a melody of brilliant madness.  He talks the way he sings and he sings the way he talks, with perpetual ease.  Listen to Lovely Day and try not to party, listen to Ain’t No Sunshine and try not to reminisce, and listen to Just the Two of Us and try not to dance.  Withers crushes the competition and he does it with gut-wrenching soul.  If you don’t like Bill Withers then there is absolutely, positively something wrong with you.  He’s an unrivaled master who wins at life and does it all while holding notes for preposterous lengths.  In case you haven’t surmised, Miles ain’t got nothing on Bill Withers, and Bill Withers makes Sinatra look silly.

Valentine's Day in Manhattan - A Rant

    Manhattan on Valentine’s Day is dreadful.  The sheer magnitude of the city becomes this overwhelming weight, an island for the demonically “in love.”  Each block is lined with starry-eyed, moonstruck dunces.  The city transforms into a blur of roses and cheap Champagne.  Messengers mumble and grumble as they carry arrangement after arrangement from one business to the next, each bouquet uglier than the last.  Nobody knows what they’re doing and they smile blindly through it.  The people wait expectantly, either hoping for a delivery or hoping the woman with the Lilies at the cubicle over falls down an elevator shaft.  The Empire State Building flashes this revolting red and can be seen from every dank alley in the city.  There is no escape from those flashing, cartoon hearts.  But it’s not just the Empire State Building in Manhattan, everything is bright red.  Everything stings the eyes.  And the weather is always cold.  The taxis kick up muddy snow as they careen out of control and there are puddles of dog urine everywhere.  As the hours drag, the buildings shade orange and the Hudson glows its horrible winter glow.  The faces yell, each one over the last, each voice becoming less and less sensical.  Rather than argue about cab routes and sidewalk zonings, people shout about the cost of Carnations and stingy chocolate sales; nine million people clamoring for ten percent off their chocolate covered cherries.  Restaurants clog with the overprivileged and depraved, the dining rooms packed well beyond capacity.  You can hear every conversation and every conversation is either boring or tragic.  There is no affection, only that same anxious energy, waiting for the day to be over.  Everybody has this glint of madness in their eye, as if the woman at the painfully close table could grab her fork and pluck out her companion’s eye.  On Valentine’s Day in Manhattan, nobody looks “in love,” everybody just looks stressed.

    Small towns aren’t any better, though.

The Dells - A Rant

     I went to the Wisconsin Dells once.  It was fucking insane.  The whole thing was this combustion of carnies, panhandlers, and conmen.  Everything smelled like urine and Taco Bell, and there was this horrible sea of trailers and RVs, roaming the land like predators on the hunt.  The hotels had the faint aroma of rancid pork, as if the rooms had been renovated from some recommissioned slaughterhouse; their carpets brown from wear, pools of dried semen, spit, and blood.  The toilet paper frayed and the sinks spit rusty, red water that, no matter what, always seemed lukewarm.  Everything consumed you, but nothing satiated you.

     At night, along the edges of town, the townsfolk leer at you like mocking clowns, an evil band of bullies all part of the same inside joke.  Who could believe a family would really show their faces in a place like this?  A place like the Dells?

     Every two minutes you were reminded that the snack bar was now open or the gift shop was holding a sale.  Everything was for sale in the Dells.  Helpless piles of cash fermented in the back rooms of cheap thrift stores, their owners eager to tell you how great the souvenir penny machines were.
     Nothing made sense, and people paid gladly for it.

     There was the constant rumbling of go-karts echoing in the distance; those poor helpless eight year olds so anxious to ride a cracking asphalt track, only to be disappointed by the lawnmower engine and deflated tires.
     Placid scenery is ruined by the Wendy’s, the Culver’s, the McDonald’s, and Subways—not because of the food, but because of their dangerous shapes of abstraction and what they have come to mean amongst society’s stunted landscapes.  The people steer their ships in the direction of light, but the light only fades, and they find themselves surrounded by the loud, farting engines of rusty RVs.

You leave the Dells with no real memories, only the lingering sense of regret.  Childlike wonder is cast aside like a forgotten toy.  The children scream, though I have no idea if they are screams of joy or screams of horror.  

     The Dells is the poor man’s Vegas: there are no hookers, blow, sex, violence, mystique, or allure.       There are sounds, and lights, and sensory overload, but it’s all a muddled display of perfect nonsense.  There is booze, however.  I suppose that much is true.  But the booze’s cheap, pissy taste is worse than that rusty water.  

     This place leads the people astray until their pockets are empty and their rusty trailers squeak meekly home. 

     It is a carousel of fuck and the madness never stops.