Dog Daze

ONE
I stare out into
the backyard

through the silver-
barred back door

after sunset to find
lightning bugs clicking

on, off, on against
the deep browns

of garages and
apartment buildings

while skyrockets
paint the blue

with slashes of
yellow and green,

with the sounds
of bursting air.

TWO
I'm waiting not so patiently
for the sky to decide which
way it would like to spin
the dial--toward merely gloomy
midsummer overcoat or full-force
frontal passage with pea-soup wall
of smoke flowing forward over
North Side three-flats and
South Side commuter tracks,
over kids blowing off leftover
Independence Day incendiaries
and playing Hide and Seek through
empty lots, gangways, gray back
porches and black trash cans, over
my uncovered head leaning against
a rusting pillar just barely propping
up the Sedgwick El stop where
dime-sized storm drops start
to plink and dive and get sucked
down greedily by the dry
widened planks of the platform
as if the impending moisture
could make them trees again.

Hot Fun in the Summertime

I can't say I'm that much in love with summer.

I don't like hot weather. When it's cold, you can put on more layers, but there are only so many layers you can remove in summer before the cops tote you away. And since La Casa del Terror doesn't have air conditioning, I need to have two huge box fans trained on my torso to keep me from melting Margaret Hamilton-style until I'm just an Ed-shaped stain on the futon. (Yes. I know. Ew.)

Still, I prefer that the seasons act like they're supposed to. Winter should be cold and snowy. Fall should be brisk and leafy. Spring should be...okay, Chicago doesn't really have a spring, so it really shouldn't be anything at all. And summer? Should. Be. Hot.

But June was, for the most part, like April and May before it--overcast and cold, especially right on the shoreline of Lake Michigan.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the Windy City is intimately familiar with the phrase "cooler by the lake"; it was even the title of a novel by Larry Heinemann. When the wind comes out the east it blows across the lake, which takes a long time to heat up from winter's chill, especially at its center, where it runs several hundred feet deep. In July and August, this is a boon, providing natural air conditioning to much of the city. When the prevailing wind is out of the east through most of the first half of the year, however, the city remains under a blanket of gloom far longer than normal (if Chicago weather can truly be referred to as "normal").

On June 11, I walked out of the building where I work and saw my breath. That is so wrong.

Amazingly, though, on the first official day of summer, the weather decided to straighten out its act and act like it was June, not March. The sky cleared. The air warmed. Overcoats were put away. Bikinis and sun screen became useful again. Air conditioning in movie theaters became refreshing instead of brutal--and thus sought after by those of us who don't have AC (or lives). La Casa del Terror turned into a broiler once more, and I slept sans underwear. (Yes. I know. Ew. Again. To the Nth.)

And I couldn't have been more thrilled. About summer. Not the underwear thing.

So when coworkers bitch about the heat, I shrug. "It's summer," I tell them. "What were you expecting?" They don't usually have a lucid answer.

Now I do some of the things I most love to do. Like put Sly & the Family Stone's Greatest hits on the new CD player. Or take long walks down to the lake and back again. Or snap pictures of the sights of summer. (I used to do this a lot on Friday afternoons, back when my company had "summer hours"--work an extra half hour the first four days of the week, leave at noon on Friday. They don't have that this year, though. Dammit.) Or just sit out on the back porch with a Red Dog in hand and kill a couple Salems. Or go out to Navy Pier and watch the fireworks go off over Monroe Harbor (something I'll likely do tonight).

Basically, I just find ways to waste time. But what better time of year to do it, especially with so much free time to be wasted?

Have a happy and safe 4th of July, everybody.

Open Ground

It was late. Or it was early. That line gets pretty fuzzy east of 3 a.m. Anyway. Riding the Western Avenue bus south. Headed home from my best friend from high school's place. Hung out there a lot back then. Don't know what we were doing that night. Playing cards. Or video games. Or just shooting the shit. Haven't heard from her in years. Doesn't matter. That is now. This was then. On the Western Avenue bus. Sometime before dawn on a January night. Or morning. Take your pick.

The bus stopped at the O'Hare Blue Line. Runs 24/7/365. Been on it many times. Even at that hour. Once threw up off the Belmont platform after a party in Logan Square. Had gotten on the train going the wrong way. Haven't touched grain alcohol since.

A couple people get on the bus at the stop. One guy about my size threw himself down in the seat across the aisle from me. Light unkemped brown hair. Dull, hooded eyes. A nose that looked like it had been broken at least once. I went back to staring out the window. Then he started talking to me.

"Comin' back from a party, huh?"
I looked at him. Wearily shook my head. Went back to staring. "So, where's the party?" I looked at him again. "No party, man. Just goin' home." He stared. Unblinking. Looked drunk. Maybe high. Couldn't smell anything from him. Didn't want to get close enough to.

Two stops closer to home. He started up again. "C'mon, man, Where's the party?" I looked at him again. Unwillingly. "No party. Just tired and headed for home." He continued to stare. Unblinking. "C'mon, man. I know you know where the party is. I wanna go to the party." I stopped looking across the aisle. Just a few stops to go. Just a few stops to home.

My stop came up. I grabbed the pole. Swung up quickly. Sprang out the door. Crossed at the light. Made the turn toward home, Just a couple blocks to go.

Someone walked up beside me. About my size. Dull, hooded eyes. Nose that looks like it's been broken at least once. Moved more quietly than you'd think.

"We're goin' to the party, right?"

"I told you, man. There's no party. I'm tired and just want to go home." Getting irritated. Nervous. This guy's not high. Not drunk. Not right.

"C'mon. Take me there. The party at your place?"

My place. This freak was going to dog me all the way to my place. Mom and Dad's place. Home.

At the last intersection before home, I stop. "Look. There. Is. No. Party. I'm going home. You should, too. Goodbye." He blocked my path with his body. "What. Is. Your. Problem?"

He shoved me against the apartment building at the corner. Not hard enough to bounce me. Or ever jar me. Just an attention-getter.

"I'm going to kill you," he said.

He had my attention.

It's not what you say. It's how you say it. He didn't say it like a threat. Or a promise. Or even something he particularly wanted to do. He said it like it was a forgone conclusion. I was going to die. He was going to kill me. Simple.

I wasn't scared. Strange. But I'd been threatened with worse. Had worse done to me. Survived. And Mr. Broken-Nosed Psycho wasn't displaying any weaponry. No knife. No gun. Not even the "finger in the pocket" trick. Just his hands on my army surplus coat. And unblinking, lifeless eyes.

"Okay. Why would you want to do that?"

No answer. Stare. "Let's go." No reasoning with him. Not right. Started walking down side street. Away from home. No telling where he wanted to take me. His place? An alley? Abandoned building? Didn't plan to find out.

Options? Few. Could have tried to slug him. We were side by side. Not a good angle. And hadn't slugged anyone in years. Not a fighter. Back me into a corner and I'll come out swinging. Like any other animal. But that would be a last resort.

Best bet? Pick a moment and run for open ground. Put a few steps between me and Mr. Broken-Nosed Psycho. Open ground. More options. More of a chance.

We walked. But only a few feet. The apartment building he'd pinned me to ended at an alley. My alley. I didn't look at him. Didn't say a word. Just waited for my right shoulder to clear the burgundy brick and made a quick, hard right at the corner. Tooled down the alley. Took long, loping steps. Open ground.

Didn't really have a plan. Mom and Dad's back gate was maybe 30 yards ahead. A bitch to open at any time. Much less when a broken-nosed psycho is right behind you. I'd have to jump it. If I got there far enough ahead of him. Maybe grab something in the alley to hit him with. A pipe. Two-by-four. Anything. Keep running, stupid. Keep running.

Tricky footing in the alley. January. Snow on the ground. Packed down by passing cars. Like running on wet glass. Could have been worse. Could have been wearing dress shoes. Or boots. Instead, trusty Chuck Taylor All-Stars. Good traction. Long, loping steps. Open ground.

Mr. Broken-Nosed Psycho? Not so fortunate. Had dress boots on. Not ideal for sprinting at any time. But especially not this late. Or early. In January. On packed-down snow. After someone wearing Chuck Taylor All-Stars with a few steps on him. Not ideal at all. Too bad. So sad.

Maybe it was God. If I still believed. Which I'm not sure I do. Or fate. Or dumb luck. Whatever. But just ahead of me were two horizontal columns of light. Slicing the cold, thick night. An open garage door. With a car. And a man behind the wheel.

I slid to a halt. Right between the headlights. Started screaming. "HELPTHERE'SAFUCKINGPSYCHOBEHINDMEWHOSAYSHE'SGONNAKILLME!" Driver didn't speak. Didn't move. Kept his hands on the wheel. Ten o'clock. Two o'clock. Just stared ahead.

Mr. Broken-Nosed Psycho? Never broke stride. Kept sprinting down the alley. Picked up speed as he went. faded fast into the distance.

Strange. Now that he was gone, now that I was safe...now I felt afraid. Maybe it was like in the movies. Teenager thinks he's safe. Psycho in hockey mask pops up and bisects his stupid, trusting ass. Happened all the time. In the movies.

I approached the car. Driver still didn't move. Hispanic male. Medium build. Thick cookie-duster mustache. Staring at me. Maybe afraid himself. How would he know what he'd just seen? Maybe a lovers' quarrel. Or a drug deal gone bad. Or two crazy-ass mofos chasing each other around on a bitter-cold January night. Or morning. How would he know?

"Can...can I cut through your garage to get to the street?" Voice shaky. Winded. Relieved. Scared. Driver finally moves. Takes right hand off ten o'clock. "Go around and use the gangway." I nodded. Thanked him. He never got out of the car. Hand back at ten o'clock.

I took a deep breath. Exhaled not slowly, like you should when stressed to the Nth. But quickly. Like spitting. Or letting smoke out of your lungs. Then I headed for the yellow light of the street ahead of me. Craned out around the corner of the building. Like a wolf in a Warner Brothers cartoon. No one on the street. No one walking. Or driving. Or anything. Open ground.

Quick, long steps. Keys out and ready. Top lock. Bottom lock. In the door. Through the living room. Up the stairs. Home.

Never told Mom and Dad about that. They worried enough about me as it was. Chicago streets can be dangerous. Any of them. At any time. No need to confirm this for them. They'd both been mugged before. Dad was held up at gunpoint once in a diner. They knew. They worried enough.

Never saw that guy again. Never want to. Hope the karma train came and took his broken-nosed psycho self away.

I'm not a lover. (Not for years, anyway). I'm not a fighter. (Not unless that's all there is left to do.) But a survivor? Oh yeah. I'm that. At the very least.

The Orange Tree

On the small rectangle of decaying, gray-painted boards that passes for my back porch stands an orange tree. An odd thing to find in Chicago, which is not know for its citrus groves. A small thing, too--it stands around two feet tall, counting the pot, but manages to tower over the shamrocks and cacti that stand atop the alley-acquired end table that all the plants in the house stand on from as early in April as they can be set out (in other words, once the snow has stopped) to as late in October as they can safely stand it (in other words, until the snow shows up again).

The orange tree belonged to Dad, who grew it from a seed. Really, he did. Ate the orange. Laid the seeds out on a paper towel. Laid the paper towel out on a shelf in the basement, safely away from the cats, to dry them out. Planted each seed in its own small pot. Set the pots out on the deck atop the back porch (a proper, full-sized back porch). Let them grow.

Most of the seeds didn't take. No news flash to Dad. he was always trying to grow odd things. Cherry trees. Pineapples. Avacadoes. Rasberry bushes. (Those actually grew--you can still collect quite a harvest in the fall in Mom's backyard.) A tomato tree bought out of the back of a seed catalog. Dad liked to experiment with many things. He was a carpenter. An electrician. A baker. (His doughnuts were more fit for pounding nails than for dunking in coffee.) A horticulturalist. Jack of all trades.

Most of the seedlings didn't survive. Again, no great surprise. One did, though. It grew steadily during its first season. I lived in the second floor apartment at the time, so the orange tree wintered with me among my plants. It not only survived, but thrived with regular watering and northern exposure sunlight. During the summers, it sat out on the deck, anchored with bricks all around its base to keep it from rolling over on windy afternoons. (the deck rests between two taller brick apartment buildings; on breezy days, especially when a front strolls up from the south, a wind tunnel effect kicks in and tosses around anything not nailed down.)

Five years later, it bloomed for the first time. Tiny white flowers dotted its green branches. By the end of that summer, the damn this bore fruit. Nothing edible. Nasty, bitter stuff. Oranges. Freshly grown on the cusp of Ukrainian Village. In Chicago. Amazing.

After Dad passed away--two days before Father's Day of that year--Mom gave me permanent custody of the orange tree. Made sense. It spent the winters with me anyway, and the deck was technically part of my apartment (since I lived on the second floor). When I moved into La Casa del Terror later that year, the orange tree came with me. It winters in my office (soon to be converted back into a bedroom). It summers on the back porch. It blooms small, fragrent white flowers. And it bears fruit that, someday, may be edible.

All because a man from Alabama living in a cold northern town wanted to see what would happen if he planted orange seeds. Maybe that's what he and Mom were thinking when they decided to have me. They wanted to see what would happen. That would make the orange tree my litte brother. Or not.

I think he was pleased with the progress of both though. Proud, even.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads I've known. Especially one.

Review: Finding Nemo (2003)

Most of the reviews I've read of Finding Nemo have focused on the computer-generated animation. That's understandable--if Finding Nemo isn't the most brilliantly animated movie ever, as some have claimed, it's certainly one of the most visually complex films ever committed to celluloid. Every frame is packed with colorful detail and playful in-jokes, most of which I missed.

Why? Because, silly person that I am, I was paying attention to the story and the dialogue.

I feel the same way about animated motion pictures as I do about live-action flicks: you can throw as much CGI at me as you want to, but you damn well better tell me a story, too--and make it a good one. The folks at Pixar understand this. Their previous efforts (the Toy Story movies, A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc.) all had fabulous animation, but it was the quality of the storytelling that held my attention; I didn't even notice the look and feel of Toy Story until about halfway through it because I was so enjoying the detailed characterizations and and witty dialogue.

To be sure, Pixar has developed a recognizable, if highly successful and flexible, formula: Establish a setting and characters (a child's bedroom full of toys, an ant colony, an ocean community); throw in an event that causes one or more of the main characters to go on a quest; have said characters meet colorful (in the case of Finding Nemo, literally so) friends/foes along the way; stress the importance of the love of friends and/or family; repeat as necessary.

The formula varies slightly from film to film, of course. In Nemo, tragedy strikes Disney-style in the first few minutes, as Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks, though he sounds remarkably like Tom Hanks to these ears), a clown fish, loses his wife and most of their eggs to a barracuda, making him afraid of the very ocean around him and overprotective of his one remaining child, Nemo (Alexander Gould). Marlin's smothering attention to Nemo, who also has an underdeveloped right front fin, makes the younger clown fish rebel, much to father and son's mutual regret: Nemo swims up to a boat and is promtly scooped up by a scoobadiver, who takes the captured little fishy back to the aquarium in his office in Sydney.

The movie thus splits into two stories: Nemo's adventures in the fish tank with other "inmates" (voiced by the likes of Allison Janney, Brad Garrett and, most memorably, Willem Dafoe as an escape-minded angelfish); and Marlin's quest to find and save his son. The latter is the more involved of the two, with Marlin meeting all sorts of fish along the long trip to Sydney, like Bruce (Barry Humphries), a shark who's sworn off of eating fish; Crush (voiced by co-director Andrew Stanton), an accomodating sea turtle; and Nigel (Geoffrey Rush), a friendly pelican.

Best and funniest of all, though, is Dory (Ellen DeGeneres, in a bouncy vocal performance that would be worthy of Best Supporting Actress consideration if the Academy considered voice acting as acting, period), a Royal Blue Tang (yes, I said "Tang"--stop giggling now) who suffers from short-term memory loss and perpetual curiousity that is both help (gathering information to help Marlin rescue Nemo) and hindrance (damn near getting both of them killed numerous times).

Love of newfound friends (though not romantic love, dancing around a cliche live-action movies would be better off dropping as well), accepting responsibility for actions, succeeding in spite of substantial handicaps and against daunting odds--empowering themes that Pixar touches on regularly, enriching their characters and giving their adventures a surprising degree of emotional heft (when I wasn't laughing, I was tearing up).

Add levels of humor aimed at adults and children with out excluding or condescending to either audience, and what you wind up with is a movie that touches, amuses, entertains and emotionally satisfies like far too few movies do.

Oh...and Finding Nemo looks really pretty, too.

Vanishing Chicago: The Gym

If you've ever ridden the El north on the Brown, Red or Purple Lines, you've seen it--a long, narrow, slab gray building squatting just east of the train tracks, with which it has coexisted peacefully for more than 70 years. It's sturdy-looking, this building. Imposing. Impressive. Gothic.

And oh so doomed.

The building in question is the Hayes-Healy Gymnasium, owned and maintained by DePaul University since it opened in 1929. Recently, though, the University agreed to tear the gymnasium down as part of the Chicago Transit Authority's plan to expand the Fullerton El station. The expansion itself isn't a bad idea--as one of the busiest hubs in the CTA system, the Fullerton station could certainly use renovation and amenities like escalators, elevators and improved lighting, all of which are on tap for the new station.

Unfortunately, in order to build, CTA must first tear down.

Demon Dogs, tucked under the north end of the Fullerton platform, is being razed as well, despite protests from the owner and from longtime patrons, who maintain that the little hot dog stand under the tracks is a neighborhood institution. Of course, Demon Dogs has the option of moving to another location somewhere along Fullerton, Lincoln or Halsted. Unlikely, given the steep rents in the neighborhood, but an option.

Meanwhile, to the immediate south on the other side of Fullerton, the Hayes-Healy Gymnasium has no such option.

A walk across the street and up a tree-lined driveway for a closer look at the gym reveals that it's not merely a big gray stone box covered by a slate roof, but an intricately decorated facade as well. Numerous figures line the eastern face, from male and female discus throwers (both very naked) to more primitive and fanciful details displaying different sporting events, like baseball games, hurdlers and boxers.

There are other, odder carvings--like pineapples and rams' horns--but all seem themed to the building beneath them, where college students drove to the hoop and swung on balance beams, or on the field before the building, where women softball players still spend afternoons throwing 12" softballs harder underhand than I ever could overhand.

I'm sure some of those details will be preserved in some way. Maybe they'll be put on display at the University. Maybe they'll be displayed somewhere in the new station. Maybe they'll even mount the baseball players, boxers and skaters on the facade of that new station. Wouldn't be unheard of. When Nordstrom wanted to open a store with a Michigan Avenue address, the Rand-McNally building was torn down, but its facade, with its intricate Zodiac figures, was carefully preserved and remounted onto the face of the new building (though, by my count, four astrological signs--Scorpio, Cancer, Pisces and Aquarius--didn't make it back onto the building; wonder where those went?).

That's not the same as having the original structure to marvel at, though. Buildings like this are works of art. Knocking them down is city-sanctioned vandalism. It's a shame that more creative though couldn't have been incorporated into this project. Couldn't the building have been worked into the plans, maybe as part of the platform itself? How cool and unique would that have been? Or maybe it could have converted into an adjacent shopping area--other buildings thus threatened (like Medinah Temple) have been thus preserved.

Unfortunately, the plans for the new Fullerton Station appear to be set in stone--unlike the Hayes-Healy Gym, which soon will be unset in a most permanent way.

Vanishing Chicago: The Hub

Back in the days when I could better tolerate going to movies alone--unlike now, when catch the likes of Identity or X2: More Pretty People in Form-Fitting Leather, I'm pretty much on my own (makes the after-movie discussions over pints of cider rather one-sided, it does)--the theater I spent the most time haunting was the Hub.

The Hub was conveniently within walking distance of home--"home" then being in Ukrainian Village--on Chicago Avenue just east of Wood. It showed Spanish-language versions of first-run movies for a while (I still regret having skipped the experience of Return of the Living Dead en espanol) before becoming a second-run venue. And, best of all, it was incredibly cheap--on Tuesday nights, you could catch a double feature for two dollars. Less than it would have cost to rent the damn movies at Blockbuster.

It wasn't a great theater. It was small. The screen had holes in it. The seats were hard and uncomfortable, and one whole section of seats was blocked off because they were unsafe to sit in. The place smelled like a popcorn-scented sweatsock. And I always expected to see a rat come scurrying up the aisle, but never did. (Oddly enough, the only time I saw any rodent activity in a Chicago movie house was in one of the more expensive downtown venues, where they charged three times as much for seats just as hard.)

But the Hub was a throwback to a time when nearly every Chicago neighborhood had at least one --and usually several--movie houses. The popcorn was cheap. The service was friendly. And the price allowed me to catch movies I might otherwise have skipped altogether. Like Delta Force 2 with Billy Drago as--surprise!--an evil drug lord. Or Exorcist 3, which wasn't a bad idea for a movie (a serial killer capable of carrying out his crimes by possessing others) and had one of the best "jump" moments in any horror film ever, but it would have been better off not being touted as a sequel to one of the classics of the genre when it had, at best, peripheral ties to the original and opaque, leaden direction by Exorcist author William Peter Blatty. Or Blind Fury with Rutger Hauer as a blind Vietnam vet/martial arts master (aren't they all?). Not all movies have to be great or even good to be fun. And I had plenty of fun at the Hub.

TUESDAY NIGHT AT THE HUB
The four year old with
the black crewcut does
laps around the theater
while the teenage girl
up the aisle from me
points out the narcs in
the audience to her friend
who nods attentively and
eases down in her red
vinyl seat not nearly as
gum-crusted or cracked
as you would expect at
a dollar double-feature.
The Roger Rabbit short,
whose print is so grainy
that it almost looks like
the Forties cartoon it
strains to imitate, pops
onto the taped-together
screen before the house
lights are flipped off,
before the man with his
next three changes of
clothes in the shopping
bag under his arm and
the pastel-flowered fishing
cap screwed on tightly
over sharp and darting
eyes can settle and wrestle
down the seats he needs.
Finally, the lights fade
to black, the fishing cap
stops bobbing from row to
row, and the first show
booms Danny Elfman licks
out of buzzing overhead
speakers and spills primary
colors onto the cobalt
ceiling as Warren Beatty
yanks on his comic-strip
yellow trenchcoat and
fedora and huge matte
skyline paintings answer
the question: "What if
the Tribune Tower and
the Merchandise Mart got
together and had lots
and lots of children?"

All good things must end, it's said, and so it was with the Hub. It closed as a theater about ten years ago and was converted into some kind of storage space for Catholic Charities. At least they didn't tear the porr thing down--you can still go there and dig on the primitive faces carved into the facade (for now, anyway), even if the marquee, hard seats and cheap popcorn are long gone.

Bet it still smells like a sweatsock, though.