FireVaney

To celebrate his new gig, Spiffy sprang for crab legs at Queequeg Jr.’s World Famous Crab House. We waited in a large, noisy, crowded room for two hours before a table opened up. Ate my first “soft shell” crab; drank my first glass of guava juice. Tasty? Tasty. Following the meal, Spiffy drove us over to the big, new Knottydart Hotel & Conference Center. We had no business being there, but looking inconspicuous has its perks. Then again, Spiffy’s always spiffier than most. I’m the inconspicuous one—and maybe that’s why Spiffy keeps me around. Some brat was celebrating his bar mitzvah in one of the ballrooms. The theme was The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson . Kinda odd, given that this newly minted man was likely born a few years after Carson retired. It makes you wonder how much this brat’s dad missed “Carnac the Magnificent.” There was an open bar, so I picked up a Guinness and followed Spiffy, who’d picked up a Canada Dry, out into an elevator. We wandered into the spacious...

Ma, Stepdude, and I drove up to Lake Geneva, WI for Mother’s Day.  Before we got there we stopped in Antioch, where Ma and Stepdude mused over the possible purchase of a lot in one of those Redacted Homes developments. Turns out there were too many hidden costs. That, and Ma brings home the bacon these days. Stepdude? He brings home the bupkis. And besides, Antioch is too far from where Ma works. Upon reaching picturesque Lake Geneva, we stopped for a bite at—of all places—Subway. After that, it rained. But the rain passed quickly. We wandered around the old business district, which was very much alive with tourists.  The Copper Mountain Toy Co. & Train Land Of Lake Geneva * sells, among a great many other trinkets, historical action figures of Jesus, of Moses, and of Shakespeare “with Removable Quill Pen & Book!” They also had an action figure of a coffee barista. On impulse, I purchased the three remaining Shakespeares: one as a future gift to one of my many theatri...

The names of places—of restaurants and places—if I only visit them once, their names almost always escape me. This is also true of people I’ve only met once. Typically, it takes two or three visits for a name to stick. (And to think of the piss-poor shape my memory’ll be in when I’m twice my current age!) Point is, we went to a place for carnivores for what’s-his-name’s bachelor party. (Lori is a vegan, by the by.) Along with a fork, knife, plate, napkin, and water glass, each diner gets their own circular cardboard card. * One side of the card is red and the other side is green. Somebody explains how it all works and then the servers surround you with various forms of cooked meat. They’ll keep carving it up and heaping it onto your plate until you flip the green side of your card over to its red side. After all that—which is to say, after scarfing down way, way, way too much meat—we drove over to a flashy bowling alley in Streeterville where they charge you five bucks for a BOTTLE of...

Forgot to mention that the sewer backed up into Pop’s basement last week. I’d gone down with a load of laundry and was met with a swamp of filth. I spent the day—ankle-deep in piss and shit and used Charmin squares—cleaning and salvaging and trashing. When the plumber finally showed up, he was only in the house for about five minutes. He spent the most of the afternoon in the front yard, rodding out the pipes from there. While it didn’t look like an easy task for him, at least he was out in the fresh air. I spent the better half of yesterday bagging up anything else that seemed unsalvageable. Today, I’ll have a better idea of just how many bags the garbage truck will have to haul away. No idea how much extra it’ll cost. Tonight, at The Goodman: a staged reading of an early draft of Mamet’s American Buffalo . Mr. Mamet himself will be in the house. *   10 April 2006  * [If memory serves, Mr. Mamet remarked, onstage, just prior to the reading, that he wasn’t a fan of festivals t...

If you drop a notepad and it hits the ground, it’s not going to break. And you don’t need to recharge a notebook – that is, a paper-filled notebook. And unless you’re famous (or infamous), nobody’s going to want to steal your paper notepad or your paper notebook, either. Not that it matters. Forgive me, I am in mourning, for a Constant in my life has now faded into oblivion: The Chandler’s Assignment Notebook. In these parts, in the past, they’d go on sale around the beginning of August. But as I feared with last year’s edition, all was not well in Chandlersland. In years past, there’d be some famous, inspirational quote printed on the upper lefthand corner of every page. But for the 2007-2008 edition, there were no such quotes. That space on that side of every page was left blank.  Yesterday, whilst stockers stocked the shelves with Back-To-School supplies at the local SavYah, I asked a manager when they might expect their annual shipment of Chandler’s Assignment Notebooks. It had...