Big Mike: It's Rocket Science To Me

Ah, love and marriage.

The Loved One looked up from her laptop, removed her glasses, and asked me, accusingly, "So, you bought a book today? How much did it cost?"

I was ready with the snappy comeback: "Huh?"

"You wrote in your post today that you bought a book."

"Oh." Clearly I was at the top of my repartee game.

It took a few beats for me to get her drift. In Tuesday's post, I wrote about what an intellectual titan I am. I stood on my head to separate myself from the common clay, illustrating this by pointing out that the radio and television banality I'm being bombarded with during my stay at the Holiday Inn is so, well, weird - at least to me. My concluding line was that I was going to jump up and rush to Barnes & Noble to buy Isaac Newton's "Principia."

I was, of course, being a smartass. I bet I'll never actually purchase a copy of one of the two or three most important scientific works ever written in any language. In it, Newton lays out his Law of Universal Gravitation and explains his Laws of Motion. I mean, for gosh sakes, who hasn't heard the line, For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction? That isn't exactly how Newton wrote it, but it'll do for us here. Suffice it to say that the physics of everyday life are laid out tidily in this three-volume set.

A quick search on Amazon reveals that used sets of the Principia start at $337, and therein lies today's tale.

A good marriage, I am discovering after having experienced a bad version or two, mixes two people whose strengths and weaknesses dovetail nicely. It would be impossible for me to illustrate this better than to admit that The Loved One handles the checkbook and I do not.

In earlier posts, I've revealed that my mother was a fiscal tyrant. She was the type of person who looked out the front door in search of the mailman because the electric bill was due. Long before things like online banking, Ma kept a stack of envelopes - marked electric, gas, car insurance, and so on - into which she'd parcel cash from each of her and Dad's paychecks throughout the month. She kept such a close eye on these envelopes that when I, at the age of ten, began feeling aggrieved that my baseball card addiction wasn't accounted for in them and decided to help myself to some of their contents, she knew immediately what was going on. The next time I went in for the dip, I found a note written by her saying, essentially, Gotcha!

Ma became a paragon of bill-paying in reaction to her mother, who was not. I, in turn, rebelled against Ma's ways. And so it goes. Had I chosen to spawn, my daughter or son would probably have become a CPA. Thankfully, I've spared at least one poor soul that cruel fate.

Anyway, I've lived most of my life like a drunken sailor. I've suffered more third-degree burns on my right thigh than I'd care to admit. Poor old Pat Arden, my former editor at the Chicago Reader - the microsecond after any of my stories ran in his paper, I'd be banging on his door to find out when he could cut me a check. And god forbid I should spend that check on anything as silly as bills - not when there were motorcycles to buy, rounds to pick up, women to impress and, yes, books to accumulate.

Whereas Ma couldn't mail the check to the electric company fast enough, I looked upon utility bills as mere suggestions. The real bill, in my warped view, was the disconnect notice. This system worked well except for those times I forgot to open the disconnect notice. Trying to read in the dark is such an ordeal.

The Loved One was aghast at my pecuniary discipline, or lack thereof. Fortunately, she was drawn in by one or two other facets of my character and so we became a going concern. Only she made it clear from the start that she would be the Chief Financial Officer and if she caught me thumbing through the checkbook, she'd cut said digits off clean.

Now that's a system that really works. Rather like Newton's everyday universe.

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!

Randolph Street: South Side Steppers

Fridays on The Third City are now are the exclusive domain of photojournalist Jon Randolph.

Today's pix portray a venerable South Side institution, the Wednesday Afternoon Dance Set. Revolving among three renowned night clubs - Mr G's, the Taste Entertainment Center, and East of the Ryan - the weekly party catered to...

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...an older but still swinging crowd. Photos from this shoot ran in a March, 2002, Chicago Reader story entitled "Still Got It." For a $13 ticket, the nattily-attired steppers got a good lunch, beverages, great music, and the opportunity to swing a well-shined shoe. Numerous South Side clubs still hold weekly afternoon dance parties.

See you here next Friday for more Randolph Street and everyday for more of The Third City!

Big Mike: Our Strange Heroes

Benny Jay and I had that conversation the day before yesterday. You know, the one wherein two old chums discuss the untimely passing of a third.

I was walking home from  the Barnes and Noble in the late afternoon. Every few minutes, a drop or two of rain hit my shiny scalp. As I struggled up and down the Ten Broeck hills, Benny rang me up and broke the news that Norm Van Lier had been found dead in his apartment. Our reactions ran the gamut from shock to silence and, finally, to uproarious laughter over shared Stormin' Norman anecdotes.

There was, as a single example, the time seven years ago that Norm decked a fireman. Based on news reports and what I think I know of Norm's ways, it wasn't hard to imagine what had happened. Norm was at home in his lakefront highrise, probably sitting in his beloved beanbag chair - or, at least, its modern-day equivalent- and listening to that first, brilliant Chicago Transit Authority album (my own favorite cut from it is "Questions 67 & 68.") Perhaps he'd employed some additional aid to achieve a certain tranquil frame of mind; no one can say. Whatever. The sound of sirens stopping in front of his building caused him to high-tail it down to the lobby.

Rattled that his mood had been broken, Norm had a head full of steam as he exited the elevator. In the lobby, he encountered a stranger wearing a white T-shirt. Apparently, a few cross words were exchanged.

The dialogue might have gone something like this:

Norm: "Who the fuck are you?"

T-shirted stranger: "Who the fuck are you?"

The next thing anybody knew, the man in the white T-shirt, actually one of the responding firefighters, was laying on the marble floor rubbing his jaw.

True? Who knows. But like all good stories, it ought to have been. Stormin' Norman was the toughest, meanest, most competitive son of a bitch you can imagine.

I knew that Benny would write about him yesterday. Norm Van Lier was to Benny what Ron Santo is to me. That is, a teenager's fixation. Even as we've become thicker, grayer, and more flatulent with the years, Benny and I have hung on to our boyhood idols, Norm and Santo. In fact, we've each written long, in-depth Chicago Reader cover stories of our respective paladins. The hardest part of the extended times we'd spent with Norm and Santo was trying not to look like the awe-struck, acne-faced geeks we'd reverted to.

After I hung up with Benny, I planned to follow up on his post by writing today that his affinity for Norm was baffling because no two more diverse personalities exist on this planet. Benny is the most accommodating, understanding, serene man on six continents. Norm was, of course, Stormin' Norman.

Yet, mirabile dictu, Benny expounded on that very dichotomy. Norm was everything Benny wasn't and, often, wanted to be.

It wasn't so with Santo and me. He was impulsive, confrontational, uncontrollable, thin-skinned, opinionated, and a general pain in the ass. Subtract 16 years and the exceptional baseball skills, and that would be the precise description of me.

Benny idolized what he wasn't; I idolized what I was. That's ironic because throughout his adult life, Benny has appeared to be very comfortable within his own skin. I, on the other hand, have spent most of my life trying to jump out of mine.

Benny and I will have that conversation again, perhaps very soon. Santo turned 69 on Wednesday. He's a diabetic and has a troublesome heart. We'll express our shock, turn silent, and then laugh ourselves to tears recounting the time he set his toupee on fire in the Shea Stadium broadcast booth.

What is it with us and jocks? Benny Jay and I have constructed our lives to be the antitheses of single-minded, physically-oriented, acquisitive, pugnacious professional athletes. Today we revere Philip Roth and Amnesty International. We discuss lofty concepts like altruism, egalitarianism, and the inner workings of the political process.

Yet we're still held in thrall by a couple of old warhorses. I doubt Stormin' Norman ever ranked altruism among his most cherished human traits. And I Santo knows why Portnoy was inexorably drawn to a girlfriend nicknamed "The Monkey," he hasn't let on yet.

We're odd birds, Benny and I.