I’m trying not to post too much, but I have a lot to say lately and think this is the place to say it. Dear man that he is, Mike P is concerned that I will hit a bad patch and not be able to keep my Sacred Bond with you, our readers; but I’ve been sick for the last three days and still want to write, so HA to illness. HA, I say, to that I say HA-HA.
With the understanding that this might be rather intermittent—less so if everybody likes it; like Secretariat, I respond very poorly to the whip but very well to someone whispering “Go! GO!” into my ear—I want to trot out some old-fashioned newspaper column-type stuff.
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It’s an experiment. You like experiments, right? After all, without experiments we wouldn’t have the nuclear bomb.
FIRST, AN ADMISSION: The dominant form of print comedy these days, 750 usually timely, premise-driven and rather anonymous words—what The New Yorker used to call “a casual”—has always bored the shit out of me. Yes I can do it, and have done it, and can we all just please stop doing it? Most casuals actively annoy me. Especially now that custom and SEO give them all titles like What If Plutarch Wrote A Life of Elon Musk?
But a newspaper column? Oh yes. That I am here for.
I remember exactly when Column Lust first hit me: It was early July 1986, and I’d taken the train in from Oak Park, packed SRO into a ratty and unairconditioned Green Line car with people “goin’ ta Taste,” the then-newish Festival of Food Poisoning down by the Lake. Armed with June birthday money, I was planning to buy (of all things) some Vuarnet skiing sunglasses. Bright blue with yellow lenses, these would not make me look more handsome, as I hoped, but instead vaguely like Ranxerox.
The walk from the State/Lake stop to Water Tower was unbearably sweaty, especially with cerebral palsy. So halfway there, I had screwed up my courage and taken a side trip to The Billy Goat Tavern. I’d seen the Belushi sketch on SNL, everyone had, but never gone in; I was 17, still young enough to wonder if some mean drunk might yell at me. “Get out, kid! And don’t come back ‘til you can drink!”
I’m not proud to say this, but Chicago and I are just out-of-tune. From the moment I arrive, I am looking forward to leaving. In desperation, I tend to hole up in the few places I like—Donny’s Skybox and two blocks of Wells in Oldtown; Kate’s and my old neighborhood near Boys Town; Gibson’s Steakhouse; back when it existed, the Jazz Record Mart…Tucked underneath Michigan Avenue on Lower Wacker Drive, the Billy Goat is one of the very few Chicago places that actually makes me feel good. So much so that I look past all the Cubs’ curse nonsense.
(I’m NOT saying it’s nonsense the Cubs were supernaturally fated to fail, year after year. I’m saying it’s nonsense that we should do anything but celebrate and encourage this. The one year the Cubs didn’t lose, we got Donald Trump. That’s just a fact, and my being from St. Louis has nothing to do with it.)
This picture doesn’t really do it justice; for one thing, it was dirtier then, much dirtier—all of Chicago was. Dark, dingy and well-used, back in ‘86 the Billy Goat was a proper newspaper bar. Nestled between the stately Tribune Building on one side, and the Murdoch-owned Sun-Times on the other, the Billy Goat was the 24-hour DMZ where rival reporters would meet and drink at all hours of the day or night. It also had good hamburgers, and all the pickles you could steal.
Chicago in 1986 was still the town of Royko and Kup and Studs Terkel, though that was changing—room for the next generation, I remember thinking. I remember sitting there, munching on a hamburger and sipping on a Coke in the cool and the dark, smelling a hint of mildew mixed with Bartender’s Friend, thinking how marvelous it would be, how perfect, to write a column for one of the papers. To be working late at night, stuck on something, and walk over to the Billy Goat for a beer and a rethink. That’s a Chicago I really could love, sitting among all the flotsam and jetsam a big city throws up at night, the reporters and the cops, the prostitutes and the johns, after all the so-called normal people have gotten on the Green Line and gone back to their tidy suburban homes. And you, Mike, sitting at the bar, tie askew, fedora still on your head because “the Hawk” whips in every time some got-damn person opens that got-damn door, racking your brain for one last joke, just ten more lines to round out your column running in the morning. What if Plutarch wrote a Life of Elon Musk? That could work; I’ll finish this beer and give it the college try, you’d think, and slap down a five.
From that afternoon 37 years ago to this one—a straight line. And maybe my beef with Chicago is simply that the world changed, and I never got to live that dream? Could be, Plutarch.
• • •
ROALD DAHL FANS are furious over a decision by the estate to go through Dahl’s books removing words and other things deemed inappropriate to modern sensibilities. I pledge to do the same with Barry Trotter, and sell them as blank notebooks.
(I wonder if my favorite swear, “git,” makes the cut? Back in my Barry days, I spent several years asking UK people what it meant. No two of them agreed, the gits.)
• • •
TIE UPDATE: I am crazy for neckties, which is ironic given that I live in a SoCal beach town. In my neighborhood, all the women look like they got up at 4:30 a.m. just to prep for a trip to Starbucks, and all the men dress like third graders. Business idea: Underoos for adults. Already taken.
• • •
AND FINALLY: Ave atque vale to Richard Belzer, ex-member of the National Lampoon Radio Hour (you’ll like this), who died Saturday at his place in France. Despite many mutuals I never met Richard, but I always admired his commitment to JFK assassination theory. (Did Irv’s daughter Karen Kupcinet know too much? Pr’aps.) Goodbye, Belz, and hope you find out who was on the Grassy Knoll.
The American Bystander's Viral Load is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
