"I Voted" Stickers are the New Joe Camel
David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel

"I Voted" Stickers are the New Joe Camel

Voting is easy. If you can do it, that is. Holding the swine you elected accountable once they get off the campaign train and settle into their new digs is where the real work begins. A true patriot’s day off is Election day. Every day in between election days are working days.

“I Voted” stickers are the new Joe Camel swag. Everyone wants Joe camel’s stuff but few comprehend what sporting a Joe Camel windbreaker really means.

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The Women of the Democratic Party Have One Year Left to Keep Screwing Things Up
David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel

The Women of the Democratic Party Have One Year Left to Keep Screwing Things Up

Let’s be real clear up front: The Patriarchy must burn and die. But if the future is female, then the future needs a Come to Jesus Moment like no other. Even if the Dems pull off a win in 2020, if the Party’s most prominent don’t stop acting without thinking of the consequences, the future may indeed be female, but it will be a future led by women who are just as self-serving and stupid as any man has ever been.

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Top 5 Scariest Films for Halloween
David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel

Top 5 Scariest Films for Halloween

I’ve never been a fan of haunted houses. I spook too easily, I guess. I’m not the guy they want walking through their halls anyhow. In past houses I’ve committed all offenses in reaction to being spooked: punched a worker square in the nose; stomped to death some kind of mechanical tentacle protruding from the floorboards; grabbed a psychotic clown by his wig and headbutted him in the teeth; made my wife go first.

Around this time of year, I’m a bigger fan of staying in where the people around me are safe. But I still enjoy giving myself the heebie-jeebies. That’s why I’m offering you, dear reader, my pick of the Top 5 Scariest Films you should watch this Halloween.

  1. Shutter

  2. Gravity

  3. The Force Awakens

  4. Superman III

  5. Mannequin

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For the Love of Little Broken Things: A Chicago Hairstylist Emerges Stronger After Fire
David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel

For the Love of Little Broken Things: A Chicago Hairstylist Emerges Stronger After Fire

We’re all rebuilding. We all want to be beautiful. We’re all seeking gratification. Krepel went through the fire and emerged to give us a place that is as much ours as it is hers. A place where we can feel beautiful, where we can feel gratified, because when we feel good, we don’t want to burn the whole fucking thing down. She’s given Chicago a place that proves the most beautiful things often come from the things that were the most broken.

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Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of September 16, 2018
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Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of September 16, 2018

I’m canceling my subscription to Esquire after more than a decade of being a loyal subscriber and reader. Since Jay Fielden became editor-in-chief, it’s become an apologetic magazine for angry feminists and their terrified husbands. Granted, the reporting and fiction is still of value but it’s become too hard for me to get past the loaded front half of the rag — even flipping through it — without getting annoyed or feeling talked down to. I’ll miss you, Esquire, but I’ve missed you for a few years now.

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Love Curse — Part II
David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel

Love Curse — Part II

This graveyard had a reputation for being haunted. But what graveyard wasn’t? By the time they got there, she thought, this van would be haunted with the ghosts of what she’d rather have been doing. Playing old SEGA Genesis video games; binge watching Arrested Development; sleeping on the couch with a partially chewed bite of Tony’s frozen cheese pizza in her mouth. She caved to hanging out only after her boyfriend, Len, promised they’d spend all next weekend at home on the couch.

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Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of September 9, 2018
David Himmel, Post-It Wall Notes David Himmel David Himmel, Post-It Wall Notes David Himmel

Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of September 9, 2018

The people who post how excited they are about the Christmas Season/Holiday Season in September are the worst kind of people. Slow your roll. Appreciate what’s in front of you. Be present. It’s OK to be excited and have things to look forward to but dial back your enthusiasm. No one likes an adult who gets giddy over something three months away like a puppy gets giddy over rolling around in its own shit.

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Identifying the Corpse on the Blue Line’s Third Rail
David Himmel, Fiction David Himmel David Himmel, Fiction David Himmel

Identifying the Corpse on the Blue Line’s Third Rail

I turned around. There were wakes of glistening human coolant running down this woman’s forehead. They were almost as long as her airbrushed and bedazzled fingernails. It was too hot for a weave that thick. She kept tapping at it, itchy from all that sweat spewing out from the top of her head. The nails, the hair — how does she function in this kind of heat? There’s no way she worked a desk job, or any job that requires her to type on a keyboard of any kind.

You do?

“I see this shit all the time working for the CTA,” the sweaty woman said. “He’s just some gutter punk.”

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The Graceful Failure of Mayor Rahm Emanuel
David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel David Himmel

The Graceful Failure of Mayor Rahm Emanuel

But what’s he really going to do? I imagine that he’ll spend the next three to eight months furiously beating his knob to a pulp jerking it to footage from the 1968 Democratic National Convention riots in Grant Park. You know, back when Chicago was a city he could get behind. One where the police policed. Maybe he’ll spend his days eating Arby’s sandwiches hoping to find a finger in his food. His finger.

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Gary Thompson, The Great American Drifter
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Gary Thompson, The Great American Drifter

I felt a kinship to this guy. I, too, had always felt that without the trappings of relationships — the weight of accountability to someone else — I could do much more. Yet, there I was, afraid to be by myself for two weeks on a chicken run to the fray of a new life unknown. Riding shotgun was a guy who also preferred solitude but would still be stuck on a Great Falls road if it weren’t for other people offering up a little bit of their company.

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