It's not a sham. Wow.

I've never really given Billy Mays (the OxyClean pitchman) any thought other than to wonder "why is he yelling?" But word of his death this weekend was sadder than I expected. Probably because I never wondered if the guy was married (he was) or if he had kids (he had two, a son in his 20's and a daughter who is a toddler).

Then there were interviews with people who knew him personally; every one of them talking about what a gentile and kind man he was. I was kind of touched by their love of their friend.

It's not like I'm an asshole ALL the time. It's just Billy Mays was someone I never gave a whole lot of thought to until he was gone. I didn't even realize that he had a reality show on the Discovery Channel called "Pitchmen".

So, I guess I will say goodbye to waking up on the couch in the middle of the night to hear Billy's fast-and-furious sales pitches, replete with blood stains galore and wood floors that look like they have hosted a thousand barn dances. In a strange way, I will miss that.

But what I really hope and pray is that Billy's passing won't be like Hercules fighting the hydra. I can't stand there being one of these fucking ShamWow dip shits in the world, let alone a multitude.

Vince Offer, Vince Shlomi.....whatever your name is - you're no Billy Mays. You never will be. You're destined to just be a gigantic annoying tool who beats up women.

Randomly unoriginal

I read a number of blogs, and every so often all bloggers experience a point where they don't know what to write about. They usually do one of two things ~ write about how they have nothing to blog about, or list the songs they're listening to on their iPod while it's on shuffle.

Without further ado, here's what my life has sounded like this morning...

I Feel the Earth Move - Carole King

Moviestar - Stereo Total

Friday I'm in Love - The Cure

Too Much Heaven - Bee Gees

Super Freak - Rick James

Mr. Cab Driver - Lenny Kravitz (yow!)

Bodhrans On the Brain - Black 47

Have a Good Time - Paul Simon

Trouble - Pink

Little Willy - Sweet

Whole 'Nutha Thang - Keb' Mo'

Candyman - Christina Aguilera

Turning Japanese - The Vapors

I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones

Superman - Lazlo Bane

Boom Boom - John Lee Hooker

I Want You - The Future Kings of Nowhere

Cobrastyle - Teddybears

Cumbia del Sol - The Blazers

Gold Digger - Kanye West

The House is Rockin - Stevie Ray Vaughn

Low - Flo Rida

and playing right now.....Solsbury Hill - Peter Gabriel

That's it so far. Maybe this afternoon I will will post a "Random #2". Have a great day, everybody!

Dancin' in the streets

I love Aretha Franklin. Specifically, I love the song "Respect". I have absolutely AWESOME memories of that song, the best one being the night that my friend Sue, and her friend Sue and I got stuck in a HUGE traffic jam on the Kennedy expressway in front of the Rosemont Horizon (now the All State Arena) after the Amnesty International concert let out on the night of June 13, 1986. The traffic was so thick and no one was moving, so we decided to crank up the tunes. We were singing and dancing in our seats when "Respect" came on the radio, and all at once we decided to get out of the car and dance. We were dancing and singing in the middle of I-90, which was funny enough, but then other people got out of their cars and danced with us! It truly felt like some crazy scene out of "Fame".

When the song ended, we had a good laugh and everybody got back in their cars. To this day I can't hear that song without that specific memory and a Cheshire cat grin on my face.

Which is specifically why I HATE THESE FRICKEN CRICKET MOBILE COMMERCIALS. Not only are they annoying as hell and run incessantly, but they have ruined and cheapened one of the greatest songs of all time.

I hope Aretha has some ear plugs; I know I need a pair. And maybe a fork so I can poke my eyes out.

Tick-tock, tick-tock...

Well it's officially summer, with the summer solstice occurring yesterday on Father's Day - which also made yesterday the longest "day" of the year. Yesterday we clocked in the most amount of daylight we will see all year. You know what that means, don't you? We're on the downside now. From tonight through December 21st, the amount of daylight is getting shorter. Just having this information depresses me. All winter I look forward to the days getting longer. I really begin to notice it around February, when I get off the train and it's dark, but you can still see a little sliver of light in the west that promises to be a little bit bigger day by day until its completely light out when I get off the train and doesn't get dusky until around 8:45 pm.

Now the daylight is going to get shorter from this moment on. Most people won't even really notice at first because it will begin coming off the sunrise. The sun rose today at 5:16 am. It will set at 8:30 pm. But on Wednesday, June 24th the sun will rise at 5:17 am and set at 8:30 pm. One minute gone. It's negligible, to be sure, but its happening, and I hate it.

I have never been diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder, but I'm pretty sure I have it. The short days and long nights of the late fall and winter bother me more and more the older I get. I also have less tolerance for the cold. (That's another post). All the darkness makes me feel like a mole, or a mushroom. I get home from work and the lethargy sets in and I don't want to go anywhere or do anything that requires me to go out. It feels like the middle of the night from 4:30 pm until 7:00 am the next day. It's exhausting.

I guess I'm just going to have to suck it up and move on. Bitching and moaning does absolutely nothing about it - as well as does nothing for my psyche. I am going to enjoy the summer daylight for as long as I can - but I will be secretly keeping track of the ever-shortening days, and the approaching darkness that will inevitably follow. Man - winter sucks.

Hot town! Summer in the city...

First I must preface this post. I hate sweating. Always have, always will. This is probably why I am not a professional athlete. Or the owner of a sauna.

So, it's been unseasonably cool in Chicago so far this summer. I'm sick and tired of hearing people complain about it. "Where's the summer?" they moan. "This is JUNE?" they whine. I keep my mouth shut but the fact of the matter is, I like it like this. It's been in the high sixties and low seventies and its warm enough not to have to wear a jacket, but cool enough that my hair doesn't fall into limp, sickly little strands the second I go outside.

Yesterday all the weather complainers were quiet. It warmed up into the high 80's here in the city (thank you Lake Michigan) and hit 90 in the suburbs. I was supremely unhappy. Walking up the stairs to the Metra platform, I could feel the temperature rising with each step I took. Where I enter the station is cool and air conditioned. Once you head up to the platform (which is covered, but basically outside) it's all over. And you can only imagine what the throngs of other commuters smell like. It's vile.

Today promises to be worse. Today's going to be swamp-ass hot. They are predicting a high of 90 again, but it rained last night, and there's a nice cloud cover dialing the humidity up to 100. The train ride into the city wasn't so bad. It's still relatively cool out. But tonight - ugh - I am dreading the train ride home. Days like today produce a noxious smell that can only be described as a melange of nasty armpits, ass, and sweaty scalp.

Here's your summer, folks. You asked for it. Heck, you begged for it. Personally, I know at some point I will be sweating like Albert Brooks in Broadcast News. Yeah, it's not pretty, especially with my hair all limp and plastered to my face. But enjoy it nonetheless, swamp-ass and batwings be damned.

I have a sad story to tell you, it may hurt your feelings a bit, last night when I walked into my bathroom, I stepped in a pile of...

I don't know if anyone remembers my post from last July about the PHENOMENAL deal I got on shaving cream at the Jewel. It was a 10 for $10 sale, and I figured, what the hey - I'll use it. Well, I'm sad to say that I cracked into the last can of the stuff yesterday. But it's good to know that 10 cans of shaving cream will last me exactly 1 year. Why that's good to know - I have no clue. And if you find it good to know, get a life.

Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone

I really hate people sometimes.

Every morning I park my car in the train station parking lot at Arlington Park. I usually get there a few minutes earlier than I need to be, so I can riffle for the $1.50 parking fee, make sure I have everything I need (this doesn’t always work – I still forget things like my umbrella…) and put on my lipstick. For some reason, I put on all my other makeup at home, but lipstick goes on in the car. Anyway, I digress.

So a couple of weeks ago I’m sitting in my car when I see this silver car pull up into one of the stalls reserved for handicapped folks. Now, I will tell you that nothing bothers me more than people parking (or idling) in the reserved spots when they don’t have the proper license plates or a placard that allows them to park there. So I immediately check the plates. Nope, no handicapped plates. So I look for the placard that hangs off the rear view mirror. Yep, it’s there. All is right with the world. However….

As I am sitting in my car, I see the driver of the silver car parked in the handicapped space get out of her vehicle. She appears to be somewhere between 40 and 50 years old. She didn’t require any special equipment, i.e. a walker, a cane, crutches. She wasn’t sporting a cast or a brace of any kind. Then she opens her drivers side back door, and grabs her enormous backpack, a laptop bag and a tote bag. She proceeds to load up her back like mule and then heads for the train platform. No limping, no slowly and carefully considered footsteps…nothing. This bitch just heads for the platform, and then heads all the way down to the other end! If you know how long Metra platforms are, they’re freaking long!!!! She was easily walking for ten minutes before she staked out her spot on the platform (yes, I watched her the ENTIRE TIME). And get this – once she gets to her friggin spot, she doesn’t put down any of those bags. There had to be 15 pounds of crap hanging off her body. She certainly didn’t look or behave like someone so incapacitated that she needs to park in the handicapped stall.

Then I realized something else. The handicapped stalls aren’t numbered. Every other parking spot in the whole damn place is numbered so the greedy bastards who run the lot can collect their booty every day. But not the handicapped ones. They’re FREE. You don’t have to pay to park there if you are in a handicapped slot. Before everyone jumps all over me saying “the handicapped shouldn’t have to pay for their parking, they have suffered enough!” let me tell you that I agree wholeheartedly. The HANDICAPPED shouldn’t have to pay, but damn it, lazy douche nozzles should!

So, in a rare moment of clarity and mercy, I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and thought, “Maybe she has something that is extremely debilitating when it flares up, like rheumatoid arthritis, or shingles – who knows? Be grateful that you don’t”. And I went on my day and didn’t give her or her handicapped spot another thought. Until the next day….

WHEN SHE DOES THE SAME FRICKIN THING AGAIN. And the day after that. And the day after that! This parking-stealing bitch has no shame! I have seriously daydreamed about following her down the platform with a megaphone, yelling “This woman steals from the handicapped, and doesn’t pay for parking” while pointing a giant foam #1 sports finger at her. Oh how I would looooove it. What’s slowing me down is the lack of a megaphone. Or a giant foam finger. So I will have to settle (for now) with this post and sharing a picture with the world of her broomstick, um…er….Hyundai.

Oh yeah, that bitch can kiss the fattest part of my ass. (Thank you, Jen Lancaster).

When the walls come tumbling down

Last fall, my mall closed. Randhurst Mall located in Mt. Prospect, Illinois shut its doors for the final time. So what, right? It's just a mall. A brick and mortar example of our insatiable consumerism. Ok, I get that.

However, Randhurst was so much more to me. I grew up in the era of the late 1970's / early 1980's. Soda pop still had sugar in it. Every summer day was spent at the pool with your best friend (and without any parents) - not online. And when you felt like being social, you went to the mall. Everything was happening at the mall and heck, all your friends were there, too. You weren't there to shop, you were there to see your friends, goof on your enemies, eat a Slush Puppy and chase boys. That was about it. Randhurst was that for me. I knew every inch of that place - every store, every place there was to eat, where ALL the bathrooms were, and what new stores cropped up in what old store's places.

My first job was at Randhurst. My junior year I got a job in Craft Corner's art store on the lower level near the moccasin shop and the Tartan Tray Restaurant. (It was more like a cafeteria from what I remember). I remember when the Tartan Tray closed down and a flood of roaches suddenly infested the art store...eww.

My senior year I got a job at Lerner on the main level of the mall (movin' up!). I liked working at Lerner, except for when older ladies would come in and want to buy their daughters something. They would say "she's about the same size as you....you know, busty". Ugh. If I had been able to suck in my boobs at that point I would have.

I was working at Lerner on Mother's Day 1984 when a former mall employee went mad and started shooting up the place in the middle of the mall. My mother called the store HYSTERICAL because it was on the news. Everyone (staff and customers) was huddled up in the dressing rooms in the dark (police orders). An hour and a half later, we were escorted out of the mall by the police after the gunman killed himself outside Chandler's Shoes.

I bought my first high school dance dress there. The shoes, too. We used to pick up WLS Top 40 Survey lists at the record store (also where I bought all my 45's - Shawn Cassidy - yow!) and eat soft pretzels from Hot Sam's.

Anyway, when I heard they were going to tear down Randhurst and put up a "lifestyle mall" (whatever the fuck that is) it made me sad. I wasn't sad to see the shops go. The mall had been struggling in the past decade. I hadn't set foot in the place in years, and I don't live that far away. I was sad because a brick and mortar part of my childhood would be totally gone.


BTW - the picture above is from early 2009. It's coming down. Goodbye, old friend.