FireVaney's

Yesterday, Mister Wisecracker * sent around a text message with a photo of his cocker spaniel in a costume. Said cocker spaniel was looking up at the camera, and the message below it read, “Dinka says, ‘Happy Easter. Now get the damn ears off me.’” Like most fringy theatre folks I know, Mister Wisecracker doesn’t take care of himself. He stays out too late, gets up too early, drinks too much, eats too much, and smokes packs and packs and packs. I don’t do any of that, but I am a yo-yo dieter. That said, I exercise pretty hard, so I figure I’ve got a better chance at a longer life—not that I want a longer life. Who can afford to live? Even if I could (afford to live), I’ve no interest in outliving Mister Wisecracker and his company of assorted misfits. Odds are, though, I will. I’d bet they’ll pretty much all have strokes or get cancer before hitting sixty. Inside of twenty years, I’d bet, half of everybody I know will be dead.  9 April 2007 * Formally and foolishly referred to a...

[Take heed: This post is not for the faint of heart.]  Pop’s mechanic’s porter shakes my hand every time we meet. He drives me back to Pop’s house, then picks me up when the Caddy’s been tuned-up, patched up, or whatever. I ride shotgun and we chitchat. This porter tells me he’s seen fifteen dead bodies. No, not all at once, but that’s quite a few stiffs for a dude who’s still in his twenties. I’m at least a decade older and I’ve only seen one. And, no, this guy isn’t a war vet. His folks don’t run a funeral parlor, either.  This porter, he’s all muscular bulk. His black hair is crew-cut short. His arms are tan and hairless. Besides being the porter, he’ll change oil and wash the cars. He’s not interested in being a mechanic, though. He’s only doing this to make ends meet. He’s got a wife and kids in a suburb north of here. He grew up in Chicago, but he doesn’t want to raise a family there.  Where the Russian mafia haunts and where the Polish mafia haunts, that’s where t...

Yesterday morning, your new scale’s digital display read 133.  Yesterday evening—after the brats, the burgers, the chips, all that beer, the brownies, the cookies, and the cupcakes at the BBQ; then after the Krispy Kreme doughnuts and the Bresler's chocolate malt at the O'Hare Oasis—after all that, the scale’s display read 138.  Whilst standing at one of the oasis’s two walls of glass—tall and wide enough to frame a Boeing 747, nose to tail * —you slurp your shake and watch the various city and suburban bursts and showers of fireworks. And, sappy you, what you couldn’t get out of your head was: Which display was she standing beneath? And you wished she wondered which one you stood beneath. But you’re fairly certain she wasn’t thinking of you at all. You’re fairly certain you couldn’t be further from her mind. †   The O'Hare Oasis stretches over the Tri-State Tollway. ‡ Think of it as an enclosed pedestrian bridge with a food court. § Giant panes of glass fit together t...