A Song of Thanksgiving, Part 2: The BF

Ten-and-a-half months ago, I woke up hungover from what I hope will be my last New Year's Eve alone. Not because I have a problem with being alone or even being alone for New Year's Eve, but because on January 1st, 2005, I was lucky enough to meet someone so wonderful and so brilliant and so perfect (for me), the only hope I have left is that I'll die before he does because the idea of a life without him breaks my heart.

I use the word "meet" loosely. I emailed The BF via The Onion personals; he answered via Salon's personals. I, you see, am a dork and a hussy. The BF, on the other hand, is a geek and a gentleman, far, far too polite to turn a lady (or even me) down flat.

Sometimes we joke-wonder about why we didn't meet each other 10 years ago. And whatever the reason, the truth is I wasn't ready for the likes of him, so gentle, so true, so tolerant and supportive. Do you need something? Do you need it now? Or worse, the Hollywood version of 'now', which is yesterday? The BF's got your back. I have learned to be careful what I wish for out loud around him, lest it show up on my doorstep, metaphorically or literally.

And of course it goes without saying he's in the 99th percentile when it comes to brains, sense of humor and sheer sex appeal.

Let me tell you this: I don't generally go in for corny sentiment. I'm generally a guy's gal, the kind of tough, hard-talkin' dame that makes John Wayne look like Jake Gyllenhal. But when my friend, Vic, inquired as to details of this fine romance, I replied without hesitation: The BF is the answer to a prayer I didn't know I'd been praying.

A-fucking-men.

xxx
c

Blog! Scribble! Type! Go!

/ Get your juices going. Get the crap out of your head and onto the page/screen/sand.

To do it anytime is good. To do it often is great. To do it every day (to paraphrase Julia Cameron) is transformative.

What are you looking for?

I have gotten well, gotten happy, gotten love, gotten clarity. Writing is the reason, or one of the big ones.

Stop reading this right now. Go pick up a pen or a pencil or your keyboard and write about how reading this makes you feel, or about how it doesn't make you feel, or about anything you damn well feel like.

And prepare for your life to change.

xxx c

See more progress on: Write every day (posted spur-of-the-moment from 43 Things)

A Song of Thanksgiving, Part 1: L.A. Jan

smoke 'em There is the family you are born into, and the family you choose. The lucky few find as much joy, comfort and solace in the former as they do the latter.

Me? With the exception of a slim few (you know who you are) I'm all about adoption.

Meet L.A. Jan.

Writing partner, oft-wet shoulder, best audience I've ever had, bar none. She will be the first to downplay her myriad abilities, protesting ignorance, stupidity and all manner of other ridiculousness. And then she will excuse herself to offer directions to the nice French lady who seems to be lost. In French. Which she taught herself in Paris...where she moved to live, on a whim, in her 20s.

Jan is a Jew from Kentucky, a real actress in a land of glassy-eyed posers, a bit of a kvetch, a constant source of light and delight and inspiration. You think I'm brave? Ha. In her 30s, this girl flew to Jamaica by herself to collect the remains of her fiancé, who'd been murdered at random whilst vacationing there. She fought her way back from a disease ten times more painful than mine, and progressive, to boot. When I countered her challenge to collaborate on a screenplay with a challenge to write a comic play about our diseases, she stepped up. Even after I added music.

She is the first to laugh at me, which drives me crazy. She is the first to laugh at herself, which always humbles me.

When I was in the hospital, too weak to fend for myself, too naive to know I needed to anyway, she was my advocate. Now that I am stronger, she has the grace to let me help her when she needs it. I stand in awe of her strength and courage and goodness every day of my life.

For this, I am truly thankful.

xxx c

P.S. All Frima and I want for Christmas is for you to quit smoking.

Quotation of the Day: c-trix mission statement edition

"People will listen when they're ready to listen and not before. Probably, once upon a time, you weren't ready to listen to an idea than now seems to you obvious, even urgent. Let people come to it in their own time. Nagging or bullying will only alienate them. Don't preach. Don't waste time with people who want to argue. They'll keep you immobilized forever. Look for people who are already open to something new." , Daniel Quinn (from Beyond Civilization), via Dave Pollard's How to Save the World blog

It's wonderful! It's horrible! It's...clarity!

nawtThis morning, I had the greatest audition I've had in months, MONTHS, I tell you! And while I'm bouncing off the walls, happy and buzzy like a good shot of joe makes me, I'm also terrified. Because this is the very same feeling I had over 10 years ago when I first stepped onstage at the Groundlings and realized that, for better or worse, I was going to have to let go of my crazy dreams of solvency and profit sharing forever to be a performer.

But it's an audition, right? I audition all the time, right? Well, yes, but not for this kind of commercial. This was a voiceover audition: that announcer, that omniscient commercial narrator, that cuddly fish/lion cub/faun that cavorts across the screen.

To want to be a voiceover actor is even crazier than to want to be an actor, which is already pretty damned crazy. Not only are voiceover actors the elite of the elite, but, echoing the shift in the on-camera world, "name" actors are now squeezing out the rank-and-file as the changing market adversely impacts their own ability to make a living.

Here's how crazy it is: almost 10 years ago, when Space Jam was released, while I had a multimillion dollar movie to serve as my reel, while I had a fucking toy of my character on the shelves of Targetâ„¢, I could not get an agent. Granted, the gig had been a fluke of circumstance, some greenscreen work I auditioned for and didn't get, still, they drew a cartoon character around me, animated it and spent a boatload of time and money getting it on the screen.

Not. Good. Enough.

Sigh...

When that 'thing' thrums inside you, it doesn't matter. You have to go for it, or forever regret it. What was once a thrilling one-off, something fun but easy to let go of, is now That Thing I Must Do Next.

Again: sigh...

Sometimes I think that life was much, much easier before I was so rudely awakened...

xxx
c

TAGS: , , , ,

She of LITTLE patience

For someone who is awfully sanguine about big things, totaling my car, losing vast sums of Monopolyâ„¢ money in the tech stock crash, watching the business I've made my living at for 22 years crumble before my eyes, I'm remarkably unskilled at dealing with the little things. 'Little' as in my downstairs neighbor, sole proprieter of a driving school, consistently hogging prime parkage in front of our building with his fleet of raggedy-ass Corollas, especially on street-cleaning day, when he has a coveted parking spot in the garage already.

'Little' as in loud talkers on cell phones in public places, people who jump into a newly-opened register line out of turn, and anyone who is STILL sending out emails about magical marzipan babies, free money from Microsoft and $250 Needless-Markup cookie recipes without checking Snopes first. (Sweet baby jesus, sometimes I wish they would slap a 5¢ tax on every email.)

Or, literally, little: as in '1/4"', the amount (I discovered this morning) that my printer, for whom I developed an elaborate series of electronic proofs and written instructions as a safeguard against this very nonsense, was off in trimming my latest design job, a ruinous disfigurement that neither the person who picked up the postcard nor any one of the dozens of people who have seen them since have even noticed.

There are some similarities amongst the things that seem to enrage me. Solipsism is a biggie (this means you, you yellow-ribbon-festooned-SUV-driving turd-mistress taking up two spots at the mall, the curb and, o, the irony, the gas pump); it actually angers me far more than outright selfishness. Having my meticulous regard for your time and effort met with carelessness sort of makes me wish (or not) I was licensed to pack heat, too.

But it's erratic, this flaming anger. So erratic that in my rare rested, grounded moments, I actually find it hi-larious in others (ha, ha! look how pissed you are that that old lady who can barely see over the steering wheel unintentionally cut you off!). Yes, I realize this points to my own pettiness. If you would like more pointers, I can put you in touch with my writing partner, any of my three sisters, or The BF, although we might have to defer that until the honeymoon is over and he is no longer besotted by the idea of free sex whenever he wants it.

On the other hand, why should you pester them, when I have in my possession a fine, WRITTEN example of my ungodly low threshold for behavior that doesn't fit my idea of exactly what should be happening at any given moment:

Last night, too tired to do any real work, I spent some time cleaning up the hard drive on my PowerBook. In a collection bucket from my first stab at GTD* two years ago, I found this passive/aggressive, stream-of-consciousness gem, apparently written on this same P-book on a crowded, cross-country flight:

ok, if a woman were sitting in that fucking seat, there is no fucking way she'd keep typing some stupid fucking pointless email to someone she totally didn't even need to be emailing. but mr i gotta have all the fucking room in the joint, mr Ima big pig and I don't care i get everythning I'm supposed to get and some of yours too is taking ALL THE MOTHER FUCKING ARMREST and room besides. this is such an i'm sure TYPICAL aggro jesus fucking christ what is it with MEN and their motherfucking sense of entitlement.

The insane ramblings of a girl you'd really like to take home to mom, right? But wait, it gets better:

oh, this is so going into a screenplay.

Yesssss!

and it would be too hilarious, the me character getting angrier and angrier, the guy totally oblivious, writing his 10 fucking page email with 1000 word paragraphs that no one is gonna read--no FUCKING ONE, you LOSER! you big fat six-vodka-swilling loser!!! WTF???

In my defense, I must point to a certain self-awareness of my insane behavior. Additionally, I should interject at this point that approximately 95% of my family on Mom's side are either alcoholics, recovering alcoholics or married to alcoholics or recovering alcoholics, so juiceheads don't rate a whole lot of compassion from me. But back to our fascinating story, soon to be seen at a multiplex near you:

and in the movie/book/whatever, at the end he should even try to pick up on her. or no, she's irritated b/c he didn't. and she catalogues everything about him that she finds disgusting--the dry look haircut, the mock turtleneck, the fact that he TURNS OFF his laptop everytime he orders another one of his double vodkas. no, no--it has to be a book, a bridget jones type of chick lit book, this angry inner monologue that rages on. god what a turd. god how selfish. but you know, god, what an asshole SHE is for letting it get to her so much

Here's the worst of it: this is fully twelve months before I even thought about starting a blog, when the ONLY record of my thoughts was either squirreled away in a journal somewhere or nested deep within the folder trees of my various computers, and yet I know the reason I put that self-aware crap in there was to not look so bad to my public.

Oh, the shame.

Anyway, I've been grappling with what to do about this pettiness, this intolerance, this shameful, shameful aberration in my otherwise sterling character and I've decided that the only thing to do is out myself. To paraphrase the excellent Louis D. Brandeis quote I stumbled across in Freakonomics (review forthcoming), "Sunlight is a powerful motherfucking disinfectant."

So here I am, in all my ugly intolerance, petty nature admitted to all and emblazoned across the web (well, someone could pick it up) for all to see, like so much tatty underwear in the emergency room.

Fling your barbs, shovel on your scorn: I welcome the angry intervention of a thousand, nay, a hundred-hundred-thousand, souls if it means an end to the tyranny of pettiness.

By myself, I will not give an inch; with your help, maybe I can give that 1/4" that really matters.

xxx c

*GTD = Getting Things Done, a book and organizational system by demigod David Allen, which you can read all about on his website, Merlin Mann's website, or any one of a bajillion other similarly geek-worshipping websites.

TAGS: , , ,

Shopgirl

Steve Martin loves Los Angeles like Woody Allen loves New York. They make their respective cities look like the most marvelous places on earth (at least, for would-be melancholic sophisticates like myself).

The Los Angeles of Shopgirl, the movie, is lustrous and hyper-true and, yes, melancholic. It is beautiful, distilled down to its essence. It is a Los Angeles I know well, and a Los Angeles I have inhabited only in my mind, the glittery carpet of interlinked grids you see from way, way up on Mulholland Drive that usually disappears as soon as you hit the traffic on Sunset. It's the Los Angeles that dreamers fall in love with, and Steve Martin is a dreamer.

The story, slim and fable-like, unfolds at a dream-like pace: a little slow, with all the edges carved off and replaced with perfectly chosen details set perfectly in frame, like little jewels. Mirabelle, the shopgirl of the title, and her perfect retro pendant. Ray, her lover/benefactor, placing a surprisingly knotty hand against the small of her back as they exit a restaurant. Jeremy, the scruffy, seedling lover who isn't quite ready until the last reel, sunlight glinting off his white suit onto his oversized shades and back onto his white suit as he finally reveals his ready-ness.

For most of the film, I sat back in my newly reupholstered movie cradle and bathed in sense of place, my favorite movie pr0n. But by the end, when Ray and Mirabelle reunite at an art show of Mirabelle's and we see that she's broken through to the other side but he still has miles to go, my heart broke, not at all a reaction I had as I finished the little novella that fueled this.

I think this is partly because, even though he wrote the screenplay, too, Martin couldn't overwrite the film. There are real human beings inhabiting these characters, and damn, they're good. Claire Danes fills in all of Mirabelle's blanks with deeply felt, completely restrained emotion. Jason Schwartzman is Oscarâ„¢-fabulous, so riotously, painfully human, you find yourself cheering him on even when he makes staggeringly wrong dude moves. And Steve Martin? Well, maybe you can catch him acting here and there, but his bravery points override any issue I have with that. He is by far the saddest character in the film: as the writer, he knows it; as the actor, he knows it a little more often than I'd like. Compare that with Bill Murray's turn as the impassive superstar in Lost In Translation (go on, everybody else is) and you'll see what I mean. Say what you want about Bill Murray's acting style (I like it, for the most part), he never, ever winks at what's happening.

My friend, Michael Blowhard, is always bemoaning the lack of grown-up movies and predicting doom for the movies in general as a result. Here's a film where 2/3 of the cast is under 30 (plus a slightly-older, perfectly-cast Bridgette Wilson-Sampras as a predatory blonde), and it is as grown-up as they come.

Doom forestalled for one more season...

xxx
c

TAGS: , , , , ,

What not to tell an actress

I've taken 2 hours out of my very busy day surfing the interweb to audition for you. I've driven 10 miles in the rain at $2.75/gallon with a cityful of rude assholes in luxury assault vehicles to get there.

I've suffered the indignity of holding up a magic-markered sign with my name on it as I smiled and slated my name for the camera like a talking fucking cow.

For the love of all that is holy, do not greet me with, "It is such a pleasure to see an actress brave enough to come in and audition in no makeup!"

Twat.

Photo by Marc Alan Davis used under a Creative Commons license

Wherein our heroine learns to avoid the damned street entirely

Leaf with holes My friend, Mary Ellen, and I go way back to my advertising days; she was one of the first people I met when I moved back to Chicago from New York, and I still make fun of how relentlessly and Midwesternly cheerful she was when she poked her head into my office for the first time to invite me to lunch.

She is still way too nice to remind me of what a dark and twisted troll I was, but 20 or so years later, she's simmered down, I've cheered up and we've met in a new middle ground. Our semi-/annual conversations have become important to both of us because we serve as touchstones for one another, showing how we've changed and where we might still need to. And, since Mary Ellen forsook advertising for psychotherapy instead of something idiotic like acting, it's basically like I get a 90-minute session free, or for the price of a phone call, which, since I switched to Vonage, is almost free. Ha, ha, Mary Ellen, I win!

Anyway, after the brief-but-requisite foray into the piteous state of national affairs, we launched into the more important topic of boys boys boys. Specifically, what we were doing with ours and how it all was going. (Mary Ellen and her husband have been together 15* years, during which timeI've divorced one guy and slagged around with a bunch of others, so there's always lots of touchstoning action there.)

I'm happy to report that things are tip-top back in Illinois; I'm guessing that by the way I natter on like a schoolgirl about The BF, everyone reading this knows things are hunky-dory here in sunny California. But it was not ever thus. Which got us to talking about two things: whether mileage logged**, solo or in tandem, is responsible for things going more smoothly or whether there really is a more-right-for-you type than those hilariously inappropriate jackasses you couldn't get enough of as a girl of 30 winters.

Here we sharply diverged, with Mary Ellen taking the highly uncharacteristic "life is short, life is shit/soon it will be over" viewpoint (i.e., there is no one type of person more right for us and relationships are, at their best, "a crucible, or cauldron, depending on the day" for personal development) and me staking out the cute boy – debilitating mental illness = reasonable shot at happiness position.

However, we both agreed on one thing: time do make the difference, both in knowing what is and is not tenable and speeding up the loosening of one's monkey-like grip on the latter. This is why I'm happy to be a craggy old crone of 44 rather than the juicy scoop of 20-something I once was. Also, I have excellent genes.

Mary Ellen even supplied the poem of the day: a lovely offering by one Portia Nelson, whom you may know better as Sister Berthe in the film version of The Sound of Music (or, for you 70's hipsters, the Law Office Receptionist in the only version Can't Stop the Music). I'm being glib, but I'm actually rather moved by Portia's story, having read up on her via her lovingly crafted website and read her poem, "Autobiography in Five (Short) Chapters" on the INS (yes, the INS) website. I guess self-actualization is a hot topic of discussion among potential immigrants to the U.S.

The poem is contained in There's A Hole In My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery, and is, apparently, quite as famous as any Von Trapp in its own right. The book (and contents) are copyrighted, so I can't but excerpt a bit here, but it resonated deeply with me, and I must needs share a stanza here, the one I got stuck in for a good 15 years:

2. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I am in the same place.

But it isn't my fault.

Yeah, right.

On the one hand, where else could you be from ages 18 - 40?

On the other hand, let's hear it for 44.

xxx c

*Mary Ellen says it's actually closer to 11, but my position is if you make it past 10 years together in this farkakte world, you might as well call it 20.

**Intelligent, aware and awake mileage, that is. Just making it to age 170 is no guarantee that you will be any smarter than the average 12-year-old, and probably less smart if that 12-year-old has learned things like "don't stick your hand in there unless you're sure that thing is unplugged".

Photo by novon, used under a Creative Commons License

Exchange of the Day: "The Book, Music & Lyrics of Mormon" Edition

TO: Colleen Wainwright [email redacted]FROM: Sidney [email redacted] DATE: November 1, 2005 SUBJECT: (no subject)

Margie, I am looking for a brilliant Mormon composer to write the score for "An American Prophet," a wonderful, touching, and quite factual show about Joseph Smith and his book of Mormon; Perhaps the most important musical about Mormon history ever. Click [URL redacted] and read this wonderful show and start writing. You'll see I write up a storm: book and lyrics to 20 funny and dramatic musicals, eight have been completed and possibly up for production, six are being written by some of the most important composers, (see bio.) For Broadway, click "Ev'rybody's Jumpin,'" "The Final Curtain," two hysterical suicidal comedies. If I disturbed your privacy, please forgive me and donot respond, otherwise lets get going.

[signature email link / URL redacted] [bold text formatting sic]

----

TO: Sidney FROM: Colleen Wainwright DATE: November 3, 2005 SUBJECT: RE: (no subject)

Hi.

I believe you intended to email this to someone else. This email address [e-mail redacted] does not belong to someone named 'Margie'.

Good luck with your musical!

xxx c

----

TO: Colleen Wainwright FROM: Sidney DATE: November 3, 2005 SUBJECT: RE: RE: (no subject)

Colleen, Please forgive me, just looking for talented Mormon composer to write my show. If you write music please take a look.

----

TO: Sidney

FROM: Colleen Wainwright

DATE: November 3, 2005

SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: (no subject)

No forgiveness necessary, Sidney.

Good luck with your project.

xxx c

----

TO: Colleen Wainwright

FROM: Sidney

DATE: November 3, 2005

SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: RE: (no subject)

Colleen, Read it and you'll fall in love. Write a couple of tunes and lets get going.

----

TO: Sidney

FROM: Colleen Wainwright

DATE: November 3, 2005

SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE:(no subject)

Sidney,

I am not Mormon and the little time I have to work on songs, I must spend on my own.

I'm sure that given your level of passion and enthusiasm, you'll find the right collaborator in no time.

Again, best of luck to you.

xxx c

Image of the Angel Moroni by Aquisbe used under Creative Commons License

Exchange of the Day: "Well, You Asked" Edition

"So...you still have that blog?""Uh-huh." "Yeah? How often do you post to it?" "I try to post twice a day. One post, one quotation. But today I didn't post." "How come?" "Uhhh.... Well, my boyfriend just got back from five days out of town." Beat. Beat. Beat. "We have some, um, catching up to do?" "Ah." Beat.

"So you'll send me that Crohn's information to pass on to my, "

"Yeah, yeah. Just shoot me an e-mail."

, part of an actual conversation the communicatrix had today at an audition with great actor and way-too nice guy, Clint Culp

Quotation of the Day: Share-Alike Edition

"Someone asked me recently, 'Meghann, how can you say you don't mind people reading parts of your book for free? What if someone xeroxed your book and was handing it out for free on street corners?' "I replied, 'Well, it seems to be working for Jesus.'"

, author Meghann Marco, in a conversation with Jason Kottke, on why she has no problem with Google Print indexing her book

TAGS: , , ,

Book review: Shopgirl

I am a fan of the old Steve Martin. The SNL/L.A. Story/"The new phone books are here! The new phone books are here!" Steve Martin. I don't get the New Yorker pieces, and the thicket of hype was too thick around Lapin Agile to entice me into seeing or even reading it.

I picked up my copy of Shopgirl, the book, years after it was first published; this particular softcover had an inside cover price of one dollar when I picked it up at a Salvation Army store on the West L.A. And I walked around with it for a bit before I committed even to that.

It was its heft that was the deciding factor. Shopgirl is a slip of a novel, a novella, as the cover proclaims, slight and ever-so-slightly precious, like most self-proclaimed novellas. It feels good in the hand, though, much like I imagine the gloves that introduce its two main characters must feel.

It is undeniably elegant on the inside as well, both in its faintly-stilted prose and the strange, spare atmosphere it conjures up. Shopgirl evokes a Los Angeles more like the one depicted in 1950s L.A. Confidential than the post-millenial version I tool through daily. The archetypes are modern, but they feel quaint, like girdled Suzy Parkers instead of juicy Carmen Electras.

It's not so much that the characters are unreal as it is they are remote, real seen through glass, real seen from one cool remove. What the novel(la) did more than anything was make me want to see the movie; I want to see actors inhabit these characters and bring them to life because I could not connect with them on the page: this Seattle millionaire, this alt.rockboy, this Silver Lake artist/shopgirl. Everything is a clean, sleek surface, with no grubby human bits to grab onto.

Steve Martin has the dark side down, like most funny people. He sketches out a sad, beautiful, believable story of two people running up hard against their limitations. But like Capote, a film I reviewed here recently, it's curiously unaffecting given what the characters are going through. I suspect Martin is a fan of order, and imposes it where he can, thinking the discipline serves the storytelling.

But it's the mess that makes a good story interesting. A writer can clean it up; a writer and director and editor can't.

Which is why I enjoyed reading Shopgirl. But I can't wait to see it.

xxx
c

Buy Shopgirl, the book, on Amazon.
Buy Shopgirl, the DVD, on Amazon.

UPDATE: Marilyn & Neil brought up the whole book-vs-movie thing in the comments, which reminded me that this rare movie-being-better-than-book thing has happened to me before, with Sideways, a delightful film which turned out to be much more tedious and blathery and self-indulgent in book form:

  • My review of the film Sideways.
  • My review of the book Sideways.

TAGS: , , , ,

Quotation of the Day: GFY Edition

"You're right! This is taking so much time away from my brain cancer research project! I hereby declare all arguments over and this website closed!" , Ryland Sanders, author of the blog A Boy And His Computer, responding to a comment questioning the sense in "wasting" time creating a review of a rotten movie BONUS "Great-Minds-Think-Alike" LINK! The communicatrix wastes her own high-value time trashing Elizabethtown in an uncannily similar fashion

You've got (A FRIEND IN) LinkedIn

The interweb is littered with the detritus of my greed and/or optimism: user names from quickly discarded affinity programs; the brokerage account I set up to score 50 MyPoints; ancient reviews I stubbornly refuse to take down from epinions because they are the last remnants of what used to be a useful tool created by a vital, interesting community before it was taken over by the twit parade and made an appropriate commodity for the likes of eBay. One of my long-lost doody deposits emailed me back the other day. I can't remember exactly why I signed up for LinkedIn, or, as I like to call it, that classmates-dot-com sibling who put 2,000 miles and a 4-year degree between it and the trailer park, but still isn't fooling anybody but itself; probably one of my caffeine-fueled attempts to get serious about "networking" and "growing my business" (which, as you can guess by the elaborate portfolio I have set up on the left sidebar and cleverly named "Photo Albums", is working like a charm).

But LinkedIn dangled an irrestibly orange and well-formed carrot in front of me: the name of a long-lost friend who apparently had added himself to the LinkedIn system, too.

What's more, they helpfully wrote that tricky reconnect email for me, all I had to do was point and click:

Linked_in

14 hours later, the interweb worked its magic and I received this communiqué from my long-lost pal:

I'm confused.

Are you working for Amway now?

Please do not contact me again.

Signed,

[Name redacted for reasons of privacy.]

Well, color me corrected! LinkedIn works! It really, really works! I mean, maybe we're not sitting down for coffee and a long jaw yet, but it's a start! And all thanks to the infinitely interconnective, completely customizable meet-up of science and commerce.

It is truly a great time to be alive.

xxx c

Cubs: the thinking artist's sports team

cubs fans

Let's be upfront about this: I don't give a crap about sports. You can have your football, your soccer, your precious curling, with the exception of one strange season in college where I was possessed by the magic that is hockey, up close and personal, I don't get it.

So this whole World Series hoo-hah eludes me entirely. And I'm from Chicago, current home of GO,SOX!!!WOOFWOOFWOOF!!!! All I know is that King of the Hill was bumped for too fucking long and can we all please just get on with it, already?

And yet.

And yet, while I care nothing about sports or the athletes who play them or the fans who cheer them on...

cubby radio

...while the Super Bowl was, when I was forced to watch it, made tolerable only by the unbelievable Italian beef spread laid out by my ex's aunt and uncle, and hopefully, a football pool win...

...while I could live my entire life without seeing or hearing about another sporting event...

...there's something about the Cubbies.

Back in my ad days, we'd get offers of free (box) seats for all the major Chicago sports franchises. I got to see Michael Jordan from the 12th row, and yes, it was beautiful. I got to meet Michael Jordan, when he acted in a delightful batch of Wheaties commercials I wrote (hideous proof to be uploaded to Flickr soonish). But the best graft, the most coveted of all tickets, were to the Cubs games. Even when you didn't get the fabulous box seats with the high-end booze bar and the off-duty Hooters waitresses who'd roll the dessert cart by.

Maybe it's because Wrigley Field is so old and glorious, springing up 50 yards from the Addison "L" stop, surrounded by post-war brownstones, in the heart of a fully residential district.

cub kids

Maybe it's the rich history, so few wins, so many beautiful, beer-soaked afternoons in the sunshine for the fans.

Maybe it's the way they've inspired my old friend from ad days gone by, Tim Souers. I'm mad for his art. Mad, I tell you. He's been doodling these strange and wonderful illustrative observations with pens and Doc Martin's Dyes between coming up with brilliant commercials for some 20-odd years now. A few years ago, he started documenting his love for the Cubs in a personal journal, a few pages of which he scanned and sent to me recently (god bless the interweb!).

So if the Cubs are what it takes these days to inspire Tim, then color me royal blue and red and slap a giant "C" on my forehead.

More baseball.

More Wrigley.

More Tim Souers.

Cubs in 2006!

xxx
c

Paintings © 2004 - 2005 Tim Souers

TAGS: , , , , , ,