Big Mike: The Good, The Bad, And The Repulsive

Ah, back in good old Louisville, where the magnolias are deep green, the grass awns wave blue in the breeze, and my nasal passages are packed with concrete, thanks to all the Ohio Valley allergens fighting to get a crack at me.

My four-day sojourn in Chicago brought about the usual love-hate reaction. The bad: the crush of traffic, the brusque - almost hostile - manner of passersby and check-out clerks, and the phallic prominence of Donald Trump's new monument to himself on the site of the old Sun-Times building. As I understand it, the condominiums of his Trump International Hotel and Tower are largely empty and he's being sued by his creditors. Come to think of it, maybe this isn't such a bad thing - it's always a pleasure to see a confidence man get his comeuppance. Still, that soulless 1300-foot sex toy on the Chicago River has marred a mostly magnificent skyline.

As for the good, well, there are my pals Sophia and Danny and their two kids, Arianna and Matty, with whom The Loved One and I stayed, Benny Jay and Milo, of course, Chinatown and Ricobene's pizza joint on 26th Street, and Wrigley Field - which I always drive circles around when I visit. The ballpark looks gorgeous, even with the commercialization of the bleacher entrance (good god, the Cubs have essentially sold naming rights to a doorway - what's next, the Michelob Pale Ale Urinals? The Vagisil Medicated Anti-Itch Ladies Room?)

I love Chicago and I hate it. I suppose that puts me in the good company of some 2,896,016 people (according to the latest official census.) A dozen or so of those citizens were gathered at the access road away from McCormick Place Monday afternoon as The Loved One and I drove past, giving us a remarkable send-off. I mean, I assume they were Chicagoans but, then again, given the reason for their jarring presence, they might well have been from distant points on the American map (as well as the American psyche.)

The Loved One had just attended a convention of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists at the Lakeside Center. Now that she's drawing pretty pictures for reproductive technology products for her new employer, she has to rub shoulders with medicos who specialize in women's plumbing.

Our plan was to begin the long drive back to Kentucky as soon as her Monday convention session was finished. The Prius was packed with all our luggage, as well as a sizable Ricobene's pizza - much of which we demolished by the time we got to Indianapolis. The sun shone, the temperature hovered around 70, the Cubs were in the midst of a four-game winning streak - what could tarnish the mood?

How about a seemingly endless string of enormous, full-color placards of human fetuses in various states of destruction? There were images of half skulls, bloody limbs, gooey guts, and all the rest of the emotional pornography that anti-abortionists wallow in. The dubiously self-described "right-to-lifers" had chosen this spot to attempt to shock us into agreeing with their selective love-of-humanity philosophy, figuring, I'm sure, that at least some of the conventioneering doctors have performed an abortion or two.

Fair enough. I love being an American and support the right of anyone to carry a placard, even if it compares Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler or posits that George W. Bush and his boys engineered the 9/11 attacks. Lunatics have as much right to shout from the rooftops as I do. Only I don't shout from rooftops nor do I much care to tote a picture of a fetus's severed arm.

So rather than drink in that last glorious glimpse of the Loop, Navy Pier and the Ferris wheel, the blue lake, and the lovably pretentious neo-Grecian architecture of the Field Museum, we were forced to peer at some religious fundamentalists' macabre messaging.

The jerks.

Big Mike: The Kidney Stone Kids

I've been chewing my fingernails for the last hour and a half. Jeez, I'd better watch out or I'll draw blood. I'm tense, edgy. The guy driving the black BMW in front of me is going about 12 miles an hour, leaning over and checking addresses. I honk. He turns around and flips me the digit. I pull around him to pass and yell, "Get the hell outta my way!"

As I pass, I see him shouting a response. Most of the words begin with an F.

I'm back in Chicago.

The reason for all my nail-chewing and overall angst is the city's unbearable traffic. I've been in Louisville more than two years now and people down there consider five cars stopped at a red light to be a traffic jam. I don't know how I survived 50 years in Chicago with my sanity intact.

I'm heading over to Benny Jay's estate, hard by Lincoln Square, a hop, skip and a jump from Wrigley Field. How long has it been since I laid eyes on my literary colleague and business partner? It becomes obvious the first time we see each other as Benny answers the door. He shushes the dog and wrestles with the front door lock. My technologically challenged old pal. He's stuck - the lock has baffled him. He literally has to run out the back door, around the house via the gangway, and out to the front to greet me.

We seem to freeze for an almost imperceptible moment, assessing each other after we hug. There's a hell of a lot more gray on both our heads, some three or four more belt notches around my waist, and -believe it or not - a good decade of living separating this moment from the last time we saw each other.

"Honestly," Benny asks, "how long has it been?

I ponder a moment. Then it hits me. I remember that memorable early October evening when we watched the festivities on TV in the Irving Park Road bowling alley after Rod "The Shooter" Beck had snuffed out Dusty Baker's San Francisco Giants, vaulting the Sammy Sosa Cubs into the 1998 playoffs. As Sammy himself body-surfed over thousands of delirious bleacherites, some now-forgotten glamorous TV reporter shoved her microphone into the faces of blotto revelers and asked, "How do you feel?"

Some nameless bowling alley employee turned to Benny and me and shouted, as if it were he she was pumping for a sound bite, "Nice tits, bitch!"

Benny and I doubled over in laughter even though we we're both smart enough to be disgusted by his ridiculous, benighted, antediluvian outlook toward women. Why? Who knows? Maybe we were giddy over the Cubs' rare success. Maybe we felt we were suddenly 12 again, giggling over some classmate's use of dirty words.

Whatever. I'm sure we'd seen each other since then but that episode will do for now.

Benny shows me a recent picture of his daughters, who, if I recall correctly, had spaghetti sauce and jelly stains, respectively, on their T-shirts the last time I saw them. They are now grown women. Ouch! What does that make me? The living dead?

Milo calls. "Glab's here!" Benny shouts into the phone. "He's in town! He just dropped in!" And, like that, Milo hops into his car to join us.

Handshakes and hugs abound. Three old goats stand around staring at the ravages of time on each other in Benny's cramped office garret. Before we know it, we settle down to discuss the things that really matter to such venerable figures.

"My doctor says I'm doing good," Milo says. "Blood pressure's good. My weight's good." (At which point I think, The bastard.) "All in all, not bad for a geezer."

I congratulate him on his good fortune.

"But, he did say my kidneys are a little iffy," Milo adds.

Uh oh.

"Yeah, I had kidney stones and they left some scarring."

At this very moment, Benny lopes up the stairs. He'd been downstairs taking a phone call.

"Whaddya guys talkin' about?" he says with the air of a 12-year-old expecting to jump into a chat about the Cubs or the Bulls or the Monkees.

We ain't 12 anymore. Kidney stones, we inform him.

"Oh yeah, I had 'em," Benny crows, almost like a 12 year-old bragging that he's kissed a girl. "I never felt such pain! I remember, it was 2003. I was coaching my daughter's baseball team. It hurt so bad I was nauseated. After the game, I was walking home through River Park and I had to stop to throw up. One of the kids was passing by as I'm bent over and I'm thinking, 'Oh great! What's this kid gonna tell her parents?'"

Milo and I agree that the kid'll probably grow up to be an eminent blogger. One of her posts will be about the time she saw her drunken old baseball coach puking his guts up in the park after a game.

We laugh. Deep, basso, raspy laughs. Milo coughs a bit. I try to catch my breath. Benny says, smiling sagely, "Ah, these kids!"

It's good to be home.

Randolph Street: The Real World of Wicker Park and Bucktown

Photojournalist Jon Randolph travels to the Wicker Park/Bucktown area for this week's installment of Randolph Street. Nelson Algren, the author of "The Man with the Golden Arm," prowled these streets and carried on his torrid affair with Simone de Beauvoir here.

For much of the 2oth Century, Wicker Park/Bucktown was home to newly-arrived Polish immigrants. Puerto Ricans settled here in the 60s and 70s. The artists and hangers-on took over in the 80s and 90s. Now, people who drive Toyota SUVs while sipping five-dollar Starbucks drinks hold sway.

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The Flatiron Building

at the intersection of North,

Milwaukee and Damen avenues.

Letizia's Natural Bakery, 2144 W. Division St.

The Chicago Moving Company

performing at the Bucktown Arts Fest.

The fountain in Wicker Park.

Psycho Baby, 1630 N. Damen Ave.

Flash Taco, 1570 N. Damen Ave.

A woman crosses the street at

North, Milwaukee and Damen avenues.

The bouncer at Double Door, 1572 N. Milwaukee Ave.

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We'll see Randolph Street here next Friday. Look for a Letter From Milo tomorrow and more from Benny Jay and Big Mike Glab everyday.

Letter From Milo: Baby's Dirty Little Secrets

My wife pissed me off the other day. I mean she really pissed me off. She called me lazy, inattentive, anti-social, hygiene-challenged and a drunkard. I want to go on record as saying that I am not lazy. I just spend a lot of time thinking.

Anyway, the more I thought about what she said, the angrier I became. I couldn't let it go. I had to get back at her. I'd show the bitch who's who and what's what around here. The problem was that I couldn't think of a proper revenge. Then, one sleepless night, it came to me. And it was perfect.

When I first started doing this blog, my wife said, "I don't care what you write about, just don't write about our sex life."

Well, honey, your worst fears are about to be realized. I'm going to expose you as the wanton, salacious woman you truly are. When I get done with this posting you'll be too embarrassed to ever show your face in public again. Your friends and relatives will ostracize you. I'm going into such lurid detail that your deepest, darkest, most illicit secrets will become public knowledge. I'll show you.

I'll never forget this one time she.... Wait! Wait, let me get something else off my chest first. A few weeks ago I wrote a piece about Tommy Granger, the poor teenage boy who was hung in 1642, by our Pilgrim Fathers, for having carnal knowledge of a sheep. I thought that it was a terrible miscarriage of justice, hanging some kid for committing an offense that the average Indiana farmboy commits on a regular basis. I asked my readers to help me restore Tommy's reputation by starting a letter writing campaign to our legislators. To date, I have not received one letter in support of clearing Tommy's name. Needless to say, I am deeply disappointed.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes, getting ready to reveal my wife's inner tart. There was this one time when she had a little too much to drink and she.... Hold it, I'm going to pour myself a glass of wine and savor it while I'm giving my wife her proper comeuppance. Be right back.

Damn! I had to open a new bottle. I didn't realize I drank so much last night. Good thing I gave up drinking hard liquor. I have to admit I once did have a little problem with booze, but not anymore. I'm a reformed man, for the most part, although I do miss the old rip and roar. Moderation was never one of my virtues. I remember waking up one morning with a foggy head and a pain in my backside. When I checked it out I discovered a large bruise on my ass.

I couldn't remember the previous evening very clearly, so I asked my wife, "Honey, did we have a disagreement last night?"

"Why?"

"I've got this bruise on my ass and was just wondering if you - heh, heh - hit me with a skillet or something."

"No, you asshole, you got drunk and fell down the basement stairs."

"Really?"

"Yeah, you bounced twice before rolling to a stop."

"Darn."

Let me get back to business here. The time has come to reap my well-deserved revenge. Once this blog becomes a matter of public record, my wife will never, ever mess with me again. Okay, here's the real dirt. She used to own this pair of high heels and one time.... Shit, I've got to answer the phone. Be right back.

That was Benny Jay. For those who don't know, Benny is a Bulls fan. Fan may be the wrong word. Zealot would be a more honest description. Tonight is game three of the Bulls-Celtics first round playoff series. Benny is a nervous wreck. He see gloom and doom everywhere. He worries about Derrick Rose's inexperience, Ben Gordon's hot and cold streaks, and John Salmons's injury. Benny remembers the Bulls' glory days when Michael Jordan was playing and the Bulls were unbeatable. I remember those days, too. I try to reassure Benny, telling him that even if the Bulls lose, they are on the right track. We've got a great young player, who one day, barring injury, will lead us back to the Promised Land of raised banners and Grant Park celebrations. Benny seems mollified, but I make a note to contact his wife and make sure she keeps Benny away from sharp objects, power tools and the third rail on the Brown Line, if the Bulls lose.

Finally I have to cut Benny off. I tell him I'm working on something vitally important right now and we agree to talk later.

Enough's enough. It's time to put the final nail in the coffin, show my wife the price she has to pay for messing with me. I swear, when this blog is posted, the Earth will shift under her feet. She may decide to enter a convent and renounce all worldly pleasure. Ha, ha - it'll serve her right.

Wait! The phone's ringing again. Be right back.

That was Big Mike, the Barn Boss of this blog site. He just told me to wrap it up, that I've used up my allotted number of words for this posting. It doesn't pay to argue with Big Mike. Rumor has it that he pistol-whipped the last blogger who exceeded his word limit. Okay, no problem. I'll fix my wife's wagon at another time. Stay tuned.

Randolph Street: The World In Chicago

Photojournalist Jon Randolph owns Fridays on The Third City. Today, he offers us peeks at Chicagoans who've come from all over the globe.

Fatima Mohammed, a Somali, at Ronan Park.

A kid on a carousel at a Neighborhood Boys and Girls Club carnival, Irving Park Road and Campbell Avenue.

A worker in the meat market district, 853 W. Fulton St.

A man at El Pinguino ice cream company, 3244 W. Lawrence Ave.

A Little Leaguer at Horner Park,

Irving Park Road and California Ave.

Join us tomorrow for more hot air from the keyboard of Big Mike Glab. Look for a Letter From Milo the day after. Benny Jay opens the week Monday with more gas. And, of course, Randolph Street will be back next Friday. The Third City is here for your reading pleasure every day.

Randolph Street: This Business Is Full Of Hot Air

Photojournalist Jon Randolph takes us into a firm that boasts it has more than a million balloons in its warehouse. MK Brody Company has been selling novelties and party tchochkes since 1911. The company moved to the wholesale market district west of the Loop in 1960, when the area was a gritty, tough spot populated by men walking around wearing blood-soaked aprons.

The district, surrounding the CTA Green Line elevated tracks between Halsted Street and Ogden Avenue, still is home to meat, seafood, and floral wholesalers,

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but chic restaurants and clubs now dot the landscape there. And, of course, the area was granted its holy imprimatur when Oprah Winfrey opened her Harpo Studios on Washington Boulevard.

Brody sells everything from champagne glasses to breast cancer awareness pink ribbons to hand fans with Barack Obama's image emblazoned on them. But after the company bought out the giant 800-4-Balloons outfit in 2005, its business, well, soared.

See you here next Friday for another glimpse of Chicago brought to us by Jon Randolph. See you here tomorrow for more of Benny Jay, Big Mike Glab, and those all-too-rare Letters From Milo.

Randolph Street: Westward Home

If it's Friday, this must be Randolph Street. Photojournalist Jon Randolph takes us on a tour of the West Loop, a neighborhood bounded by the Eisenhower Expressway on the south, the Metra commuter rail lines on the north, the Kennedy and Dan Ryan expressways on the east and Ashland Avenue on the west. The area is home to a dizzying variety of residents and...

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Willis Tower from the 200 block of N. Peoria St.

The Palace Grill, 1124 W. Madison St.

In the meat market district,

800 block of W. Fulton St.

The Lyon & Healy harp factory loading dock,

near Ogden Ave. and Lake St.

The Chicago Boyz Acrobatic Team,

practicing at Union Park,

Randolph Street and Ashland Avenue

Looking north from W. Fulton St.

Whitney M. Young Magnet High School,

211 S. Laflin Ave.

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... businesses, from the meat and seafood wholesale markets near Lake Street to the chic restaurants on Randolph Street, and from the young professionals near Grand Avenue to the single-room-occupancy hotels around Union Park.

Jon Randolph shares his peeks into Chicago life every Friday on The Third City. Join us every day for the (take your pick) well-reasoned observations or fanatical ravings of Benny Jay and Big Mike Glab. And, hey, don't forget our frequent Letters From Milo, penned by Gary's Greatest Writer.

Big Mike: I'm Not The Babe

Occasionally, even this sensitive artist must lower himself to actually take a job outside the world of letters. Whereas I contend the world is in scandalously short supply of literary geniuses, brutes such as landlords, grocers, and CTA bus drivers care little for my trenchant satires and imaginative fictions, preferring that I fork over to them cold, hard cash.

That's why, in the spring of 1998, I took a job with the Chicago Trolley Company. I was a natural: I know the city like the back of my hand and I have a booming voice.

The company was run by three fellows who'd gone to college together and then made piles of dough in commodities trading and horse racing. Dreaming of running their own business, they bought a run-down trolley, leased it out, and watched their newborn firm grow until they owned dozens of shiny trolleys and were carting wedding parties and tourists by the thousands all over Chicagoland.

I'll concern myself with two of the bosses for the purposes of this story. There was Tim, whose father was a former Heisman Trophy winner, and Rob, who'd run an OTB or two. Tim was a soft-spoken, gentle man who, like the Kennedys, appeared always on the verge of starting a game of touch football. Rob was an enormous amalgam of audacity and testosterone, given to insults and accustomed to getting his way.

I rose quickly within the company, starting out as a part-time tour driver and then, within six months, being promoted to operations manager trying to get a fire truck tour off the ground.

One March Saturday afternoon in the old trolley barn on South Prairie Avenue, since replaced by towering condo developments, Tim, Rob, some off-duty drivers, and I were hanging out. Somebody found an old Wiffle ball and bat lying around. Naturally, a game commenced.

I was eager to show the bosses what an ace I was at baseball. They'd be wowed, I figured, by my precise knowledge of the top home run hitters ever, my tales of Cubs history, and my anecdotes about noted bleacherites.

My baseball acumen was known far and wide. Benny Jay readily admits that he knows never to question my knowledge of the game. My long lost friend, the author and poet Achy Obejas, once informed me that I was known among her sisters in Chicago's lesbian nation as Mr. Baseball. And from March through October, I was a Sunday fixture at the diamonds in Lincoln Park at Addison Street, manning first or third bases and stroking blistering line drives.

Tim and Rob were the captains. Rob, choosing first, picked me because I was tall, broad, and - back then - in game-shape. He even tabbed me to hit first. The pressure was on.

Tim pitched for the other team. I came to the plate, an oil spot in a corner of the barn, and squeezed the bat so hard I was afraid I'd crush it. Relax, I told myself, relax. I took a deep breath, stepped in, and took a couple of practice swings.

"You ready?" Tim asked. I nodded. He wound up and delivered. The Wiffle-ball, as all backyard players know, pretty much defies the laws of physics. Throw it with all the effort you've got and it floats through the air. Tim's first pitch took some two and a half hours to cross the plate. I swung with such might that I almost cork-screwed myself into the concrete floor. Strike one.

Rob's gravelly basso profundo boomed behind me: "Take it easy, Glab! Y'doan have ta hit it into the fuckin' lake!"

Now I was really nervous. Tim wound up and threw again. I waited, and waited, and waited. I swung, this time in a more controlled, intelligent, efficient manner sure to demonstrate to the boys that I was coachable. Strike two.

Tim took the return throw from the catcher and began advising me in comforting tones. "Don't swing so hard. Just put the barrel on the ball. Stroke it easy," he cooed.

"Oh great," Rob snarled, "now yer gettin' sympathy from the other team."

The third pitch floated toward me. I took all of Tim's advice into account and swung precisely as he'd counseled. Strike three.

"Nice fuckin' at bat, Glab," Rob barked, disgusted.

Now I was desperate. I needed to at least show them that I could play the field. Rob made me pitch. As I waited for Tim to step into the batter's box, I became terrified that I'd flub the first ball hit to me. Please god, please, I'll start believing in you if you just let Tim hit it to somebody else. Let the other guys make the first error. I squeezed my eyes shut and pleaded, Hit it to Rob, hit it to Rob, hit it to Rob.

I wound up and delivered. Tim took a perfectly measured, relaxed, intelligent swing, just as he'd advised me. He whacked a sharp one-hopper - to me! Aaargh! Yet, it was the ideal ball to field. It came to me at belt-level, without any odd spin or flutter. It was as though the god I don't believe in had deigned it. Of course, I fumbled, juggled, and eventually swatted the ball underneath the old trolley that served as third base.

"Glab," Rob announced, "you suck!"

Tim's team won the game. Rob just shook his head at me as we trudged into the offices afterward. I said to him, "You know, Babe Ruth struck out more than any player before him."

"You ain't fuckin' Babe Ruth," Rob responded.

Well, at least Chicago's lesbian nation knew me as Mr. Baseball.

Big Mike: Fathers And Sons

Benny Jay's post about his daddy-o's mini-medical emergency sure gave me a start. Reading the first few sentences, I felt certain the tale would come to no good. I'm happy it didn't.

I've met the old bird once or twice in my life. I know he'd been a prof, teaching a ridiculously esoteric subject at a high-toned university. He seems as smart as Tolstoy and Sakharov put together. Any topic is fertile ground for his musings. He once lectured Benny that I mispronounce my own last name.

That's why it was so shocking to learn he'd been a paratrooper. For pity's sake, those guys are the toughest, boldest bastards to wear a uniform!

So not only does Old Man Jay possess a cerebrum that weighs more than the unabridged Old English Dictionary, he has a touch of Lee Marvin in him as well. That has to be a tough act to follow.

Benny Jay is more a combo of Royko and Alinsky. That's a terrific exacta but still, it pales in comparison. I wonder if, in his private moments, Benny Jay curses his luck that he'll never be able to live up to his father's standards.

The whole father-son thing rubs the rawest of my emotional lesions. My old man, to belabor the metaphor, was a mix of Archie Bunker and the Sphinx. The similarities between Old Joe and the protagonist of "All in the Family" are jarring. They were of similar age, both were high school dropouts, as philosophically attuned as two unlettered Depression-era babies could be, and prone to lash out at anything that threatened their provincial views of the world. I kid you not, they even had the same jobs - both were shipping/receiving dock foremen.

Whenever anybody waxes poetic about how brilliant the sitcom was, I roll my eyes. They ask, Didn't you think it was the funniest thing? I respond, Why the hell did I have to watch it on TV when it played out every night at my family's dinner table?

As for the second half of the tie-in, suffice it to say that if Old Joe and the Sphinx were pitted against each other to determine who could be the more mum, the contest would end in a draw. That is, except for when Old Joe was moved to howl to the world about how his family wasn't worth a nickel.

One day, during a period of family stress, he instructed me to set up a meeting of my siblings at his house because he had something important to tell us. Young Joey, Good Old Franny, and I arrived at my parents' Berwyn penthouse at the appointed time. (Charlotte was absent, having moved to Florida years before.) We sat around the kitchen table with Old Joe at the head.

What was the big news? Were he and Ma planning to move to Florida or Arizona? Had they won the Lotto and wanted to share some of their winnings with us? Old Joe looked at each of us before he spoke. Finally, his voice cut the silence. "The Glabs," he announced, "are shit!"

That was it! His big announcement! Young Joey and Good Old Franny sat gaping. My ears turned red. I leaped up and lashed out at him. All I remember was a torrent of invective that seemed to go on forever. Each of us gave as well as he got. As Old Joe and I bayed at each other, Young Joey and Good Old Franny sat stunned.

I don't regret flashing daggers in response to Old Joe's pronouncement although I realize now he'd suffered all his life from a horrifying clinical depression. He was never officially diagnosed but I don't need to be a shrink to know that he had the disease.

Whereas Benny Jay must surely grapple with his perceived inability to accomplish one-tenth of what his daddy-o did, I wrestle with my own perceived potential to live down to Old Joe's direst predictions. There were all too many of them.

Each of us - my sibs and me - has borne the scars of being raised by a man who utterly despised himself and anything that came from him (meaning us.) Old Joe never needed to make a formal announcement that I, a member of the accursed Glabs, was shit. He conveyed that message to me through subtle words and deeds all my life.

He died nearly fifteen years ago. His aorta burst and the surgeons spent an entire night attempting to sew it back together. They did this knowing that the odds of him surviving were infinitesimally small. How ironic that at the end of his life, a life lived wholly without hope, Old Joe's loved ones and those talented doctors clung only to the merest of hopes to keep him alive another day.

After the surgery was finished, I went back home to shower and change clothes. As I stood under the hot water, crying as deeply as a five-year-old, the phone rang. Old Joe had emerged from the recovery room on life support. There was no hope left.

I dashed back to the hospital to join the family around his ICU bed. Old Joe's organs were shutting down one by one. The consensus was to pull the plug. They only wanted to give me an opportunity to make the vote unanimous.

I couldn't bear to see him in such pitiable condition. Of course, I said, let's let him go. His heart monitor line went flat some 20 minutes later.

The funny thing is, he'd been in a coma since his aorta had ruptured half a day earlier; for the first time in his life, he wasn't suffering.

Big Mike: Loneliness And Marriage

My visitors of last week - my oldest pal Sophia, her husband Danny, and their two kids, Matty and Arianna - left yesterday afternoon. While they were here, the place was a madhouse. From Sunday to Sunday, only the Louisville Zoo hosted a more cacophonous symphony of barking, roaring, whining, giggling, guffawing, meowing, and flatulence.

The Loved One was only able to take part in the distemper for one full day and parts of two others. As noted here previously, she drives in from Bloomington, Indiana on Friday nights and leaves on Sunday afternoons.

Now I'm alone.

Solitude is more indicative of the writers' lot than all the pens, pencils, word processing programs, or alcohol in the world. Good old Benny Jay has constructed a book-lined garret in his North Side manor. He pounds out his political pieces and books there as well as opuses for this communications colossus. He's tied in to all corners of Chicago, taking calls on separate phones like a bookie with two minutes to go before the starting bell. He's greeted every morning by an avalanche of emails. He's constantly communicating with the outside world. Yet, he's pretty much alone all day long.

Conversely, Milo, Gary's Greatest Writer, does his work in the basement. He's banging on doors constantly (and electronically,) trying to convince business owners that his advertising copy will make them jillionaires. Again, by the end of the day, his throat is sore from all the yakking he's done. And again, he's been all alone.

Me? I pound away at the keyboard in the basement, just like Milo. Except for last week, my Murray Hill Pike ranch house is normally as quiet as a Chrysler showroom. Every couple of hours or so, one cat or the other will steal into the litter box positioned behind my office area. The sudden sound of scratching usually makes whatever hair I have left stand on end.

We've all learned the last few years that one of the most pernicious methods of torture is the imposition of solitude. Enforced, extended loneliness makes human beings crazy. Some of the effects include visual hallucinations, the hearing of voices, self-mutilation, and a grab bag of other psychoses.

Yet guys like Benny Jay, Milo, and I have elected to sequester ourselves all the live long day to gather the pennies that society showers on us literary craftsmen.

Solitude won't make us crazy; we already were crazy.

Big Mike's Marital Bliss Update

Last week, if you recall, I opted for domestic tranquility over the First Amendment. I concluded my Saturday post by writing that the question of whether The Loved One would be compelled to revisit our dispute over my Tuesday post (not linked because it no longer exists) was one of those definitive challenges of marriage. In essence, I was holding my breath as I signed off on Saturday.

You'll all be happy to know (although not in a million years more so than I am) that The Loved One didn't utter a peep about the affair while she was home for the weekend. Whew - I finally get to exhale.

Allow me to crow. I would have had neither the smarts nor the discipline to finesse the situation as I did had it happened even as recently as ten years ago. It's a good bet The Loved One wouldn't either. Sometimes I wonder if marriage isn't an operation best undertaken by those past the age of fifty. And why isn't a written and practical test mandatory before a couple gets a marriage license? We do it before people get drivers licenses. I'm willing to bet that lousy marriages have caused more death and destruction than all the auto accidents since World War II.

Anyway, I feel that The Loved One and I both aced our own test. Congratulations, Kitty - we did it!

Letter From Milo: Street Fighting Men

I haven't lived in Gary, Indiana since the late 1960's, but the town still has a grip on my imagination. There was a time, in my early teens, when I thought it was the greatest place on earth. It was a crude, tough, smelly, violent town, open 24 hours a day to accommodate the shiftworkers at the local mills and foundries. A person, if so inclined, could find a meal, a drink, a card game, a joint, uppers or downers, or a piece of ass any time of the day or night.

Both my Parents worked odd hours so parental supervision was close to non-existent. I had the run of the streets and I took full advantage of my freedom. I wandered around at all hours of the day and night, going places and seeing things that no 13- or 14-year-old should go or see. My favorite part of town was the tavern district, a wild and woolly neighborhood where anything went. It was a decadent, noisy, chaotic neon wonderland of saloons, greasy spoons, poolrooms, private gambling clubs, whorehouses, pawnshops, and of course, a bail bondsman.

There was even a clothing store I'll call Tom Smith's. It sold the cheapest, ugliest clothes imaginable. The only reason the store was succesful was that it would give anyone credit. Any unemployed mope with a bad credit history could walk into the place, agree to pay 225 percent interest compounded daily and walk out wearing a purple shark skin Nehru jacket, pointy-toed patent leather shoes with Cuban heels, and a stingy-brim hat with a jaunty feather in the band. The only reason I mention the store is because of its garish neon sign. In my opinion it displayed one of the great advertising slogans. It read, Tom Smith's Fashions, Rome, London, Paris, Gary.

As I mentioned, Gary was a tough town. Steelworkers took pride in working hard, playing hard, and fighting hard. In fact, the best street fighters attained the status of local heroes. Their exploits passed down for generations (a Gary generation lasted about five years). Great street fights were recounted endlessly, dissected, and analyzed the way Big Mike and Benny Jay can break down a Cubs game.

"Pete would have had him if Don didn't kick him in the nuts."

"Well, that's part of it. No rules in a street fight."

"That's not the point. Don just got lucky. Pete was kicking his ass."

"Final score is all that matters."

"If they fought 10 times Pete would win nine of them."

"Unless he got kicked in the nuts."

"You're full of shit."

"You are."

"Well, fuck you."

"Fuck you, too."

"You wanna go outside?"

"Anytime, punk."

Every tough town idolized its street fighters. In his wonderful book "Manchild in the Promised Land," the great Claude Brown devoted pages to rhapsodizing about Harlem's storied street fighters. My friends and I would spend hours talking about our local heros - who was tougher, who could kick whose ass, was size more important than speed, how important was getting in the first punch. Street fights were our epics, our Trojan Wars and Waterloos. In our minds, the combatants were idealized and adored, blue collar Achilles and Hectors, who worked at U.S. Steel and drove Chevys instead of chariots.

When I was a kid I could count on seeing a good street fight once or twice a week. But times have changed. I haven't seen a street fight in years. Men don't settle their differences with fists anymore. Nowadays they're more like to settle their disputes with Glocks or assault rifles.

It's a different, more dangerous world. I remember when it all changed for me, back in the early 1970's. I didn't personally witness this incident but I got the story from several occasionally reliable people who claim to have seen it.

Crazy Ray Volk and Skinny Johnson had a beef. They were both infatuated with a go-go dancer who worked in a bar that Skinny Johnson managed on U.S. 20 in Gary. It was a love triangle played out on a very mean stage. The dancer led both men on, apparently enjoying the attention. The two men, however, weren't satisfied with sharing the dancer's, ah, charms. Each wanted her for himself. The they had several confrontations, exchanging insults and the direst threats.

One evening Crazy Ray showed up at the bar with a pistol. Skinny Johnson saw Crazy Ray coming at him and dove behind the bar where, coincidentally, he also had a pistol. Crazy Ray began firing at Skinny Johnson. He must have been drunk because he was fewer than 10 feet away and missed all six shots, firing until the pistol was empty. When he realized that Crazy Ray's pistol was empty, Skinny Johnson stood up and fired twice, hitting Crazy Ray in the chest with both shots. Skinny must have been sober because it was a fine piece of shooting

As Crazy Ray lay dying he uttered a few last words. Legend has it he said, "Damn, I wish I would have brought my other gun with me." RIP Crazy Ray.

If there's a lesson to be learned here it's that street fighters can lose a fight and live to battle another day. Losers of gunfights are generally one and done.

Letter From Milo: Incorrigible!

The Eds here. Our esteemed pal and colleague Milo has done it again. He's written a laugh riot post. Makes us proud. He also screwed up the posting again. Drives us nuts. Scroll down below Big Mike's post dated yesterday to read Milo's post that should have been dated today.

Benny Jay's a more forgiving soul but Big Mike vows to straighten this chucklehead out soon. Better start practicing walking on crutches, Milo!

Big Mike: Saving The World, One Killer At A Time

The Loved One and I exited the Baxter Avenue Filmworks early Saturday evening and she was bursting with plans.

"Y'know what we should do?" she asked in the kind of earnest, ardent voice a young wife might have used some 45 years ago to suggest to her young husband that they join the Peace Corps and save the world.

"N'uh uh. What?"

"We should start a hotline for people who want to kill people."

Yeee-owww! First, we ain't young. Second, and more to the point, you might ask What in the holy hell was she talking about?

We'd just seen "Milk." The movie's climax, the assassination of Harvey Milk by a lunatic ex-cop, had reduced both of us to tears. The Loved One doesn't take teary movies lying down. Every time we've walked out of a movie theater dabbing our eyes and blowing our noses, she's spent the rest of the evening and, often, much of the next day laying out an elaborate program to rectify whatever wrong has been portrayed. After we saw "A Beautiful Mind," she pretty much rebuilt the nation's mental health care system.

Like anybody else with a shred of human decency, she felt deeply for the plight of Harvey Milk. Yet my alluring consort had room in her heart for Milk's shooter, Dan White. While I felt a certain vengeful pleasure knowing that White had spent the last years of his life in the self-constructed hell that resulted in his suicide, The Loved One actually viewed him as a person.

"We have suicide hotlines," she said. "We have drug-user hotlines and bulimic hotlines. Why can't we have a hotline for people who are so mad that they want to kill?"

"I think you've got something there," I said.

"Yeah. Not everybody who kills somebody wants to do it. Maybe if someone was there just to listen and help them get through the moment...."

Would a comforting and understanding voice have helped Dan White get through his moment of rage in November 1978? How about Mark David Chapman or even the brute who snuffed out Jennifer Hudson's mother, brother, and nephew?

We normally see murder as some sort of inexorable event, perpetrated by people who are evil or psychotic. Can it be that many murders are committed by individuals who otherwise might have lived reasonably unremarkable lives? I'm not talking about Richard Speck or Timothy McVeigh, men who were as destined to take lives as I am to take that extra slice of pizza.

I've heard the old saw that any of us is capable of murder. I'd like to be able to tell you a story wherein I was about to fire a gun at some poor soul until I came to my senses but I can't. I've never even fantasized for a minute taking another person's life, although I've given three or four chuckleheads some pretty sound imaginary beatings over the years. I can't imagine Ellen Page or Yo-Yo Ma or even Benny Jay having to restrain themselves from cutting a man's throat. On the other hand, I have a passel of ex-wives and girlfriends who surely must have envisioned pushing me off a tall building now and again.

And that's just my point. Or, more accurately, The Loved One's. Maybe, just maybe, circumstance and rage can bring a normally law-abiding citizen to the brink of a capital crime. Shouldn't there be some safety net for them, some voice of sanity at the other end of the line?

It took The Loved One to think of it. That's one of the things I cherish about her. She truly believes there are solutions for some of humanity's most intractable problems. If only we were 30 years younger; we could join the Peace Corps and try to save the world.

From The Editors: Milo's Down Below

Oh hell, sometimes Goggle Blogger can be such a pain in our asses. If you want to read today's post - a screamer from Milo Samardzija - scroll down past the Big Mike post dated February 25th and read the post headlined "Letter From Milo: Marriage Counseling." Or just click here.

GB's software puts a default date on a post the moment it's typed in the draft box. Then it gets retro-slotted even if we publish it several days later. Yuck. Fix this, kids, please!

Look for Benny Jay tomorrow. And, hopefully, we'll have many more Letters from Milo - provided his Lovely Bride doesn't strangle him today.

One more thing: buy Milo's book. Now!