The Crashers

It's been a busy holiday season this year, juggling family stuff, finances, gadgets and the purchasing of presents, but somehow we found time to create this heartwarming tale of a man (me) who contracts a computer virus and unwittingly infects the entire city of Chicago.

Enjoy.

Too Long

I once decided that if I ever wrote a book about improv, I would dedicate it to my favorite improv teachers. Del Close and Martin de Maat, two men who often saw themselves on opposite sides of the fence, died less than two years apart, and Chicago improvisation has never been the same since. I think they would have both chuckled to find that they share space in my head. Martin served as artistic director of Second City's Training Center, an amusing choice, since Martin often quipped, "It's so easy to be funny. Why bother?" He's the main reason why, when I graduated college in 1994, I wanted to move up to Chicago. Sure, I had vague ideas about making it big in improvisation, then returning to my main love, science fiction, with all of the leisure time I would have, but at this point it's clear that I might as well have said, "I'll get that transfusion as soon as I've squeezed this blood from this stone. Hope it's A-positive!"

Martin taught me to stop seeing life as a series of stepping stones. He observed that everyone who auditioned for Second City's Touring Company didn't want to understudy TourCo at all. They wanted the movie deal based on their hit SNL character. To do that, they had to get TourCo, move on to ETC, then mainstage, land a gig performing for Lorne Michaels, and finally score a hit with viewers with something inane but irresistible, the "Lothar" of the modern era. Consider this: it's like throwing a dart and hitting five consecutive bulls eyes. With the same dart.

So, I can't say that I didn't expect the day that I would graduate the Training Center with nothing more than an expensive t-shirt. I just wish I had had more time with Martin, or that more teachers took on his, "You are pure potential" viewpoint. Stephen Colbert taught my Level 5 class, and he was very nice, but my class didn't get along and he wasn't the character he plays on TV. He was interesting and hardworking and, in retrospect, I wish I had gotten to know him better, because he says such interesting things about Del.

It took me a long time to get into Del. My first workshop with him proved only how much of a jerk he could be toward college students. I guess having written The Book on what he saw as the future of improvisation led him to feel a little embittered about having to give workshops to people who had never read it, but, man, watching him bum and smoke cigarettes while he visibly hated our game of Freeze Tag made it hard to like that son of a bitch. It wasn't until I reached the end of my IO classes that I realized how much we had in common: the man was a science fiction nerd. That was cool.

More than that, once he saw a scene break out of the usual tropes of improv, becoming something closer to Art, he opened up like a flower. I was lucky enough to perform with some of the most talented and motivated people at the theatre at the time, and together all of us learned new stuff every time we took the stage. If Martin saw us as pure potential, Del saw us as the fathers of Art, mothers of Chaos, children of Science, siblings of Melodramatic Capitalization.

Too many years have gone by since their passing, and there's no rhyme or reason why I would think of them today. Perhaps it's just the season, or the loved ones we've lost recently and the many more ahead of us. It's too bad that just coming up with the quote doesn't get the book written, but that's life. Here's what I would have said:

To Del and Martin, who would have been surprised to find they share this page.
Gurus, legends, friends (but not with each other). May the heavens thunder with your wit.

Successories

A little while ago -- perhaps years, it's hard to tell with my porous brain -- my friend Sara asked me to help her out with her parents' anniversary making cool fake Successories signs that she and her sisters could print out and frame to mock/honor their folks. I just ran across one of them, a graphic I faked up of a signpost leading to nowhere, and liked it so much I thought I would upload it.

Sara's caption:
Direction: not letting the claim of a "one-way street" stop you from driving the wrong way. Or driving on the sidewalk. Or knowing where you're going at all.

Sara is cool.

Evan

Monday Pictures is a group formed at the start of the summer of 2007 to make short, fun movies to share on YouTube and various other short, fun movie outlets. We were sad to lose Bob and Stacey at the end of the summer, but otherwise life goes on. And on it did go, as Ryan Dee Gilmour and I took turns directing the script written and co-starring the brilliant Erin Pallesen. Here is the embedded video.

My name is Matt and...

...and I confess I have no idea how to pronounce the name of the actor Matthew McConaughey.

A. Muh Con A Hee ?
B. Muh Con Uh Ghee ?
C. Mih Conga Hee ?
D. All of the above ?

I'm lucky he's not in more movies. Maybe an easy to pronounce name is Kevin Bacon's career secret. You can't imagine six degrees of Jürgen Prochnow*, can you?

* Most recently seen in Primeval but also known for starring in Das Böot and The Keep.

'Bye Jihaboy

Last week, my good friend and occasional partner Bob left for Portland with his lovely S.O. Stacey to start what will doubtless be an amazing theatre. I'm going to miss him.

Bob and I met at an Annoyance class before the turn of the millennium. I hope I wasn't a jerk. We met again for my second children's show, "Kid Mystery". Hilariously, I cast him as eating machine Tad Huff. It wasn't until rehearsals began that Bob said, "I'm a diabetic. It's okay. I'll just eat during the show." From then on, Bob showed me that there was, for all practical purposes, nothing he would not do for stage artistry. This is why I know he's got nothing but success in his future.

Bob and I also performed together at ComedySportz, ImprovOlympic, and, for one shining moment, a two-man show at the Playground called (for reasons that now escape me) "Laws of Dynamics". It was a fun show. Bob was also many of the Earthlings in the ComedySportz Family Matinee of "The Paper Spaceship", a role I cast him in because it was thankless and I knew he'd be great. He was. He is.

Bob and I worked together on video projects, starting after the turn of the millennium when I'd just bought my first and only (so far) video camera, when he asked if I'd like to help him and Amber out with a music video, "Lines in the Suit". He had the idea that he would walk toward the camera, smoking like a chimney. "All well and good," I said, "but we should probably give Amber," fire-headed goddess that she is, "something parallel to do." So we made her smoke off-camera, then enter the camera walking backwards, and played it back in reverse. In the final video, it kind of looks like she's receiving his smoke. It looks pretty good, and I thank Bob and Amber for their patience with me, having taken four of their Sunday mornings to shoot it.

I could go on, but this post would be endless. Suffice it to say, Portland has gained mightily and Chicago lost a favored son, but I know our paths will cross again, and I look forward to it.

A cell phone warning

Inappropriate cell phone use bugs me, sometimes. Not all the time; if your grandfather is going into surgery and your family crowding the waiting room tells you, "Relax. It's nothing. Go see a movie!" and you do, you have my blessing to leave your phone on. I'm assuming you have a twitchy leg and can't put it on vibrate. If, on the other hand, your wife went shopping and you wanted to catch "Cold Mountain" then you probably should leave the phone off even if you left the credit card with her. The damage has been done. Enjoy that hilarious Renee Zellwegger.

I'm of two minds with cell phones and cars, and which mind usually depends on my proximity to the steering wheel. If I'm behind it and lost, sometimes I'll call for directions or to let the party expecting me know I'm running late. This is strictly a courtesy as I am always running late. As a pedestrian, though, I despise drivers with cell phones, certainly if they're not talking and particularly if they're driving an SUV. Big cars plus distracted driving equals bigger nastiness for the rest of us. If the driver isn't talking, it means they are having a Conversation. I can't think of a more inappropriate time.

Yes, I can.

It happened the other day when I took a bathroom break from my job in the afternoon. I work at the University of Chicago and during the summer the campus is a ghost town punctuated by the occasional conference, cheer camp or social function. I knew immediately I was not the only person in the bathroom. One half of a heated conversation came from one of the stalls and at first I figured two guys were arguing and pooping. I was wrong. One guy was arguing and pooping on his cell phone. That bugged me.

I decided then to get my petty revenge by dropping the caller's illusion. On a cell phone, you never know where the person is, though it's generally considered rude to have a conversation in the bathroom. I made certain to flush the toilet. I might have flushed a second time (just to be sure). Then I washed my hands as loudly as I could and, unusually for me, used the blow dryer that takes ten minutes to do what a paper towel can do in ten seconds. This time, I didn't mind the wait. I luxuriated. I don't know what my cell phone talker said during those precious minutes. I can only hope neither did he.

He was still talking, loudly, when I finished. What a jerk.

I hope he comes back. Let this be a warning: I've got a lot of cell phone rage.

Handsome

It's headshot-choosin' time, now that more than three months have elapsed since my session with Brian McConkey. He did such a great job, I'm faced with the conundrum of picking the right ones to reproduce. Please feel free to weigh in with your favorite or favorites in the comments section, or you can just email me to tell me if I really do look like a young Hugh Laurie.








Other fun things are afoot at the Larsen household, including some strained ankle tendons (no pun intended), lots of day job uptime (never stand in the crossfire when someone essential quits), and a rapidly-diminishing summer that will see several dear friends departing this city for the foreseeable future. I'll post on those later. For now: me!

Literary Barometer

Remember that contraption you used to be able to buy at Sharper Image with the glass bulbs filled with colored water and air? You could tell the barometric pressure based on how high the "10", "5" and "1" were floating. I think. I never owned one.

I think you could build an analogous device to work on Chicago's elevated trains. You can measure literary pressure by how many people per car are reading "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". I counted four tonight.

I think that means a storm is coming.

Literary Barometer

Remember that contraption you used to be able to buy at Sharper Image with the glass bulbs filled with colored water and air? You could tell the barometric pressure based on how high the "10", "5" and "1" were floating. I think. I never owned one.

I think you could build an analogous device to work on Chicago's elevated trains. You can measure literary pressure by how many people per car are reading "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". I counted four tonight.

I think that means a storm is coming.

Brandi's Giant Boyfriend

In Illinois, the Land of Lincoln, you can't go far without running into Abraham Lincoln statuary, and indeed, that's exactly what happened the other day when Brandi and I went in search of Mexican food in Andersonville. On the walk down, we diverted into a park so that I could take notes from a cell phone call. It turned out, there was a very large bronze Lincoln at the north end. I thought it was neat. You don't often see anything other than old Lincoln, the one stooped both by Civil War and being 4" taller than anyone else he knew, 8" with his hat on. Young Lincoln, while no more pretty, at least doesn't look like you can break him in half just by sneezing on him. Here is what Mary Todd married and became an opium addict for.

Now, looking at this photo, you are no doubt left to conclude that a) the real Abraham Lincoln was actually much smaller than this reproduction and they only made him larger because of the bronze surplus, or b) Brandi is a perfectly proportioned and very thin Little Person. Draw your own conclusions.

Here is a clue in the form of another photo, showing me with Brandi's bronze boyfriend. From this photo, I think you can conclude that I call it a Sling Blade, though some call it a Kaiser Blade. Mmmn-hmmn.

Amsterdamoramas

While in Amsterdam, I tool a couple of panoramic photos with my trusty little Canon which, coincidentally enough, comes with a panoramic function that lets you take multiple pictures to be stitched together in the image editing program of your choice (Photoshop CS3 for me). First, we see the Dam. This plus the Amstel river gives Amsterdam its name, or so I was led to believe by the canal tour. Admittedly, I was not able to hear all of this because the boat was crowded and the Spanish family near me would only stop talking loudly during the Spanish bits, leaving me, the English speaker, a bit out of luck.

One sees very quickly while at the Dam no evidence of water being held back by man- or beaver-made structure. Either it is so large that I was standing on it or the name migrated over from another part of the city. Again, answers were not forthcoming.

My second panorama is a shot of one of the wider canals of Amsterdam. Natives will probably recognize it immediately. I have no idea. Street names were posted on the sides of buildings, and were in fact reasonably handy to navigate by using the Amsterdam rule of thumb: think in circles. Everything past the harbor is built in a loose loop. I wish I had planned my trip better and bought a book with an actual foldout map in place of the dummy map my Frommer's guide came with. It looked good enough in the bookstore, but I realized soon enough that it did not have all the streets listed when I folded it out and tried to navigate by it. I had a similar fear in Amsterdam that Brandi and I had when we first got into Rome: that bands of thieves would stalk me the moment they saw me holding a guide book and knew I was a tourist. The only thing that happened when I held a book and a quizzical expression was a nice man who looked like he was on the way home from work asked me if I needed help finding anything. I said "no". I had scarier moments getting Euros out of the ATM, when I was approached by a scraggly-looking man of indeterminate age speaking German at me and clearly looking for some kind of handout. I walked away quickly. Following the usual big city safety precautions has served pretty well in all the cities I've visited so far, so, yes, a small amount of paranoia serves me just fine.

Photos from Amsterdam

View from the top - even if your seat on the ultra-sophisticated 747 cost the same as a used car, it still might suck like mine did for the flight to Amsterdam. I was in the very back, wedged between two irate women who obviously wanted to be anywhere but there. Why? Our seat backs were against the galley wall and did not recline, but the seats in front of us did. It felt a little like the moment in Star Wars when Luke, Leia and everyone realized they were stuck in the Death Star's trash compactor. I had my Shuffle, my computer and my book and spent it reasonably comfortable, but boy was I glad I packed the earphones because the middle-aged Dutch woman to my right just could not stop making "tsk" sounds with her mouth every time she shifted to make her back more comfortable. Let's just say the only people having a good time in our section were the Dutch college students wearing cowboy hats and clearly enjoying the mediocrity that was "Wild Hogs", the in-flight movie.


Here I am at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. If you say it fast enough, it sounds like "sh*thole", which it isn't. Rather, it's the hub for air and ground transportation, as the train to the city departs from there, as well as the shuttle to my hotel, the Amsterdam Radisson SAS. I left at 4:00 PM Monday afternoon and, due to the strangeness of a rotating, round Earth and time zones, arrived 8 hours later at 7:00 AM Tuesday morning. Mostly, I did not worry about jet lag because I rarely sleep much anyway at conferences, and this was no exception. I think in my three nights there I slept a total of about ten hours, which is pretty dismal, as was the weather when I got in. People were friendly, however, and everyone in hospitality spoke English, although since I looked somewhat German I got a few greetings in Dutch and a quick shift to the Queen's tongue when I looked quizzical and said, "Uh, hello?"

The hotel was not very far from the airport. In fact, it was close enough to snap this picture from my room. The sound of approaching airplanes did not bother me too badly - as I said, sleep was pretty rare anyway - although you can see how crummy the weather was the first day. It gave me good justification for a nap on the right side of the pushed-together king size bed made of two twins.

The hotel was located in a business park surrounded by, among other corporations, Microsoft and Kyocera.

Hamsterland

NOTE: this is a post I wrote on my Treo at the conference in Amsterdam but did not get a chance to post, as my Google came up in Dutch. Here it is in all its glory, several days late, but no dollars short...

I'm finally tired. It figures the jet lag would wait until the conference started to strike. I went to bed last night at 10:30 PM, tired but a little giddy about my role as producer-director-AV guy. People ask for my opinion! Sometimes they disagree with me! I actually like it when everyone pours in all of their divergent opinions into the big bucket of a Project. It's convergence via Darwinian meme selection.

Granted, it's plenty easy to praise democracy when you get the most votes. When it came time to decide on two speakers or four in the small-ish starting room, Frank, the quite competent head of the team setting my client up clearly disagreed with my opinion that it was better to have and not need four than need and not have. He had a point. The speakers aren't pretty and the room is too small to hide them behind, say, a plant. Still, he did his best to make my bad orders good. I get nervous when equipment ordered doesn't show up and I figure if the client feels the same, we might all be in trouble. So I played it safe and ugly.

Speaking of ugly, the weather here is apparently abnormally bad. Where? Amsterdam! It's been windy and autumn-y at least since I landed and, although you don't normally see much of a place during conferences like this one, it's been kind of sad to look out the window and see gray.

The little things are cheering, though. Breakfast this morning was elaborate and over too quickly. I've only myself to blame for making it abundantly clear to the client that I would be keeping buffet hours... 7:00 - 8:30, right up to the start of the show. Technical director Alex covered for me while I ran for lox, a roll, a mini Brie round (3 oz), apple and caramel Nutella. The breakfast Brie was as good as the lunch Brie was bad; apparently, one is French and the other Dutch. I can see why, since it tastes like it came out of a swamp. At any rate, I'm saving the apple and precious, precious Nutella for later. Nothing like hoarding in Europe, where everything is novelty-sized. Cars, food, Diet Coke (Coca-Cola Light), rooms. My king-sized bed is two twins pushed together, with separate covers for each. Perhaps that's how they save marriages on the Continent; a Berlin wall for the unconscious. I can't say that I would have slept better with the full bed to stretch out on, but it would have been a perk.

Funny enough, I woke up last night twenty minutes after 1:00 and fifteen minutes after my phone alarm was supposed to wake me, which it did not because it was set to 1:00 PM. Duh. This worried me, so I struggled to wake all the way up because I wanted to make certain I had a wakeup call set for five AM, to give myself time to finish up presentation formatting, run, wash my socks, shower and arrive in time for my self-set seven AM call.

You heard right: wash my socks. In the process of shedding weight by repacking my bag, I managed to repack my socks into my closet. I'm committing many fashion faux pas by wearing white socks with business casual attire. Times like now, Del Close's words haunt me. Channeling a director who had criticized him after a similar misstep, he said, "Close, all I could see were your ankles twinkling in the stagelights." Twankles? Not his term. My feet are wet now. I washed my socks this morning thinking a couple hours were all I needed to dry heavy cotton. No. Even fifteen minutes' hard ironing would not dry those suckers, and by go time it was catch-as-catch-can. At this rate, I should be comfortable by this afternoon, though I'm intrigued by this thing the natives call "shopping".

Probably not. There are always a million details for these events and getting away for anything is a chore. I remember doing a gig in Birmingham, Alabama in a four star hotel next to a mall. I got away from the ballroom twice, for a combined total of twenty minutes, enough to get panoramic photos of the Merry-Go-Round I would never have the chance to ride.

Boo-hoo. I'm in Amsterdam.

We joked yesterday about how little I actually do and yet I still collect a paycheck. Oh, the airplane ride was no vacation, not for me. though, technically that wasn't true for everyone on my particular 747, unless they recently added cowboy hats and t-shirts to Dutch business casual. Boy, those kids were loud. My most important job right now is to press a button when the MicroCue goes off, and it has both lights and sounds, so I'd half to be twice the village idiot to miss it. Every event I expect to be replaced by a trained chicken. Of course, the real trick is knowing when not to hit the button. I have nine presentations in the cue for today. In theory, I could allow any of my ten presenters to advance slides to the end, "End of show" black screen, then simply load up the presentation while everyone watched, but this would look uncool, too much like sitting at the computer. If, though, I can load and switch presentations seamlessly, it's a magic trick for which people will pay quite handsomely. The switch to do this is also trained chicken simple. It's one button. So eat more chicken, because one trained roster cannot do my job but two might, so the only chance we should give them to gather is at the wrong end of a Chicken McNugget.

I am also responsible for proper room setup, general client satisfaction, and redesigning presentations to follow a shifting template even as I incorporate changed and eliminated slides and propagating this among two computers while maintaining th aforementioned "magic". But this is not as entertaining as saying my job is threatened by poultry, so I don't include it in my verbal resume. That's what keeps me up at night.

That and what Michael Bay's done to Transformers. I want it to be great, but will I be amazed at the end or merely numb like I was by the time Bruce Willis detonated himself at the end of "Armageddon"?

I had a scare one presentation when my speaker suggested I break out of the slide show to play a six-second MPEG-4. Magic, people! I instead suggested I embed it in the presentation although I would not have a chance to test it on screen. He agreed, with the understanding that I could always kill the magic if he needed it that badly. I tested it on both computers. Offline, it worked fine. When it came time to show on the big screen, however, my computer crapped out and showed only a big black box where the movie would have been. I loaded the slide on backup and switched quickly. By some miracle of computation, it not only played in the dinky square I'd embedded it in, it played full screen. The switching error almost looked right, and Magic would be conserved.

Here is my second scary moment: in the main presenter's show, the screen started cutting to black. A list of gremlins ran through my mind, cavorting, I think. The graphics card might have crapped out. The connection between graphics card and motherboard had loosened on one of my users' laptops at the University, something I realized after a modicum of Googling and an unbelievable amount of screw removal. I simply did not have the time to deal with that much screwball behavior. The VGA cable might have come loose, in which case a speedy jiggle would fix it. I looked down. The screen flickered, utterly without my permission. I looked at the graphics switcher - to the AV company, it's an Extron DVS 406, but to me it's a big black box with LEDs, one button I must press and many more I must not. My theory, eventually and with a good deal of angst as the screen went black and my paranoid ears picked up a startled murmur, was that the switcher had gone into a kind of power saver mode and gone down and back up quickly. It happened a few more times before it normalized. I still can't be sure what it was, but at least I have the satisfaction of also stumping the AV guys.

The final bits of Day One were brutal, as many details needed answering and the conference ran more than an hour late. I could not stop thinking about sleeping. The room was too public and the work too urgent to do so, but I do see how close that much tired is to being drunk.

Non-bothersome bothers

So deep was I watching the movie on Sunday that my phone fell out of my pocket with a rather alarming, plasticky metal clatter. It took me a moment to find it in the dark. When I had it safely back in hand, I secured it in the cargo pocket on the thigh of my pants and continued watching the film. Later, walking out of the theater, I reached down to restore order to my pockets - the phone must go in the hip-level pocket or it will bang against my knee when I walk - I realized I was missing something. The stylus had fallen out.

I didn't treat this as a big deal then and it's not one now, but it is one of those annoyances that does not go away with forgetting. For one, I always used to play with it while my mail downloaded, prying it up just a bit with my nail, pushing it back down until the curvature of its head was flush with the body of the Treo, reversing it so that it looked like the pull up antennas we all endured in the early days of cell phones.

For two, sometimes pen input really does work better, or at least my bitten short nails serve me poorly. I've always hated the form of Palm styli even as I loved the function. The fact that the designers built the carrying of the stylus into the case of every Palm I've ever known showed a love and understanding of the consumer who spends at least ninety seconds of every financial transaction looking for his/her wallet at the bottom of his/her purse/man purse. But the body of the stylus is too small and short to write well with, and there's no good way to build a pen into it. Brandi bought me a three-in-one stylus/pen/pencil once, which was cool except that I spent a minimum of three minutes of every day searching for the thing in coat pockets, pants, bathrooms and man purses.

For three, there is now a tiny but significant hole in the back of my Treo, a little piece of despoilage where I would like to see at least a stab at seamlessness. Since I popped out my SD card Sunday as well - the small digital camera runs it for storage and I wanted to be able to take beautiful pictures on the way to the movie theater on our walk down - the unit just looks a mess. Nobody should have to walk around with holes in them (besides the usual ones for respiration, eating and elimination). We even try to cover up pores.

Speaking of beautifying, I put up shelves last night over the bed (photograph here). Along the way, I used the level, the cordless screwdriver, a pen and even fired up the table saw, which scares the crap out of me. The whole project took about ninety minutes and required the participation of both humans. I needed Brandi's opinion and called her in from the other room several times until she gave up and joined me in the bedroom while she worked on the computer.

After I had the shelves installed and reasonably secured, I set up a small reading light and a dimmer so that now, instead of having to kick the cats off, stagger over to the light switch then back to the bed to rearrange blankets and pets in the dark, we only have to dim the light to darkness and kiss goodnight. I'll work myself to the bone to make things easier for myself. It's part of being a systems administrator, or perhaps it's part of why I fell into this field.

As proud as I was of the shelf installation, I was nearly immediately humbled by a tour of our neighbors' place. How it shook out was this: lazy again, tired and ready to settle down for the evening, I planned to set the cardboard the shelves came in on the back porch hoping somebody else (Brandi) might come along and tidy up my mess. When I opened the door, there were my neighbors, Todd and Aaron, smoking, eating peanuts and enjoying the night air and a brief respite from their dog, Sampson. We started chatting. Brandi joined us. Sampson came out and so did the cats, Patrick bringing along his foil ball which Sampson played with and eventually was loathe to part with. We talked movies, weather and condos. As we often do when broaching the subject of living spaces, we became curious about Todd and Aaron's condo, and the two were kind enough to invite us inside. It was amazing.

Aaron used to work at Marshall Fields - back when there was a Marshall Fields - at the makeup counter, and had a deal worked out with the ladies on all of the floors above him. He brought home some amazing bits of furniture, frames, mirrors and, surprising even him, a tea service. He doesn't drink tea; neither of them do. Nevertheless, the service is beautiful. His drapery alone shamed our bare windows. We brought them over to our messy place, and they made appropriately nice comments, but my pitiful shelving doesn't hold a candle to the thought they put into their decor. Yet another thing lost: the contest with the Joneses. Only, they're both so nice and good to have across the way, I don't mind particularly much. Like a slow news day, I'm thankful when the 6:00 news shows a fluff piece on the dog walker who specializes in pugs. It means that, for the moment, my life is undramatic and reasonably safe. The future is dangerous enough. Let it be.

Zander's Rainbow Brain

This photo comes from a visit to the Brown Elephant Zander and his wife Julie made with Brandi and me during their visit with us late last January. The Brown Elephant is in Chicago, at Halsted and Waveland, in Boystown, not that you would know it except by the "umph-umph!" of deep-bassed electronica coming from Circuit night club next door.

All of this is to explain why my cool friend Zander looks like he has a rainbow popping out of his brain.

Funny enough, Zander is one of my friends from the furthest back, having known him more or less continuously since second grade in Lakewood, Ohio. His parents were always cool and enjoyed and encouraged his off-kilter attitude toward life. I remember in the early eighties when novelty hats really took off, he came to school with an umbrella hat, also a rainbow. I guess it pays to have a sunny attitude even when it's raining. Or when the thunder is the deep bassy "umph-umph!" of the latest Pet Shop Boys single.

St. Patrick's in Pictures

St. Patrick's celebrations this year meant getting up at 7:15 AM on a Saturday. Punishment like that deserves a reward just as large: drinking. We officially started at 8:00 AM when our neighbor John kindly prepared coffee spiked with Bailey's Mint Creme, to get us properly warmed up for our ride by Red Line train downtown to watch the Chicago Police dye the river green. Since the dying did not start until 11:00 and we got downtown at about 9:00, that left a significant gap which we handily filled with a stop at a bar for green beer and the most godawful sandwiches I have ever seen. The corned beef looked like it had been sheared from an animal fed for the majority of its short, artery-hardened life with 100% pure lard, and that it had fought the cutting. They came with "chips" (British for French Fries, I guess because they don't like the French either, after that whole Henry V thing), but the whole thing looked so impregnated with fat that open flame nearby would probably have been considered a fire hazard.


Eventually, we got to the river, and waited forever for the dying to begin. I have lived in Chicago for almost thirteen years now, and had never seen the river dyed. Saturday, therefore, was one of the most anticlimactic days I have ever lived, since, when the dying finally started, most of us had no idea that it had, or whether the Chicago Police had even finished. From our vantage point by the Clark street bridge, all we saw were slightly brighter green tendrils drifting downstream, mingling amongst the ordinary dark green of the Chicago River. We went upstream to see if we could spot the dye bombs or whatever they use to turn the river an unnatural Leprechaun green, but they had already finished. Yet, looking downstream, we still saw hundreds of people perched on the bridges and all along the river, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever the hell we had been looking for moments earlier. Maybe, after enough time elapses, all of the green coagulates into some awesome monster, or turns into money, but about the only entertainment we got out of it was trying to catch necklaces the Heineken people were throwing to promote their Dutch beer on the Irish holiday.

Oh, and the above picture is my wife, against the green river. It's pretty bright. As they remarked in the Harrison Ford film, "The Fugitive", "If they can dye the river green today, why can't they dye it blue the other 364 days of the year? "

Touche, Marshall Biggs.

Year Three!

I realize it's supposed to be leather or crystal, but after three years' marriage to my amazing and quite patient wife (as well as being pretty smart, sometimes I am completely insane in the membrane), I am loading these three pictures of her Gorgeousness. I realize the gift should be leather or crystal, but besides the fact that the Tron technology to upload physical things to the Internet won't exist until the MCP forces programmer Kevin Flynn to play Frisbee for his life inside the computer, what I got probably won't fit you.

So here are some fancy photos...
This is Brandi at Year two, double-fisting wine as her reward for enduring my so-called "jokes" and "science". We took it at a winery in Utica, Illinois after a wine tasting that left Brandi sober enough to drive to Starved Rock and me dumb enough to giggle all the way there.

Here's the Brandi after losing about four pounds of hair. I'd always really liked the idea of Brandi with short hair and been tantalized a few times by the inevitable post-hair show shearing that followed the infamous year of the "rat tail" and the "blonde 'do" (same year?). And I was right. She looks gorgeous.

Even cooler, after the cut she and her mom had similar-length hair. Even though my mom-in-law won in the "shortest hair" contest, Brandi swore revenge.


Sorry to hurt your necks, but that's Brandi, too, on our bed minus the mattress, after I assembled all of the IKEA stuff we bought. The slats take the place of the box spring mattress we had to leave at our old place because we weren't going to get it out the door without major plaster renovation. Until the movers hauled over the queen mattress, we slept on this getup with an air mattress teasing us with what the real one would feel like. I guess it's like marriage: sometimes it takes a little negotiation, but the aches and pains just let you know that you're building something better.

My wife is cool.