Getting Paid to Type as a Writer
Not everything has to be gold. Not everything has to be a bestseller. Most things won’t be either. But it’s nice to work toward something like that. Spending your days trying to leave something that will survive you, something that will separate you from the herd, something that your wife and kid and parents and grandparents and friends can be proud of. Something you can be proud of. Something that means anything to anyone anywhere. Even for a moment. Because if you can do that, then you’ve got proof to show the gods you’ve done something of value while you were here breathing the free air. It wasn’t a life spent taking; it was one that gave back, too.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of March 31, 2019
Here’s a new term that must be incorporated into our lexicon: “Momsplaining.”
Momsplaining
/ˈmomˌsplāniNG/
noun INFORMAL
the explanation of something by a woman, typically a mother, and typically to a man such as her husband or boyfriend, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing (ironically enough).
SYNONYM: Wifesplaining
Why I'm Becoming a Chicago Cop
I’ve passed all my tests including the background investigation, which is what I was most worried about. By this time next year, as long as I can get through the training, I will be Chicago Police Officer David Himmel. I’ll have a badge, a gun, a body cam, a bulletproof vest, keys to a police cruiser, and the ability to work with the citizens of my community to create a safer city for people like Jussie Smollett.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of March 24, 2019
Jussie Smollett’s face as he spoke to the media after the Cook County State’s Attorney dropped all charges against him struck me as way, way, way more smug than that of the MAGA hat kid.
Dreaming of the Mueller Report
The following is a recounting of a dream had by Laura DuBois, age 36. It was documented at the American Dream Institute for Dreams (ADID) in Washington D.C. on Monday, March 25, 2019. Here, Ms. DuBois explains her dream to ADID researchers.
Just three days after the release of the Mueller Report, with impeachment proceedings occurring at an insanely rapid pace, Trump had a massive heart attack on Air Force One while flying to Mar-a-Lago. The next day, while in the ICU at some janky Florida hospital where abandoned pet boa constrictors were the orderlies, he had another massive heart attack and died. That means no more Tweets from Donald Trump!
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of March 17, 2019
According to a New York Times and Morning Consult poll, parents are so involved with their children’s lives that they’re killing the kids’ life skills. We don't want this for Harrison. And this is why now that he's one year old, he'll be wiping his own ass. And mine. Furthermore, he'll be able to rig a sailboat and navigate the health insurance marketplace by kindergarten.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of March 10, 2019
• Being a white male without student loans is not Bad Privilege. Having your parents bribe your way onto a collegiate rowing team is Bad Privilege.
• Speaking of… Lori Loughlin surrendering to the FBI would make a great plot point of a Lori Loughlin Hallmark Channel made-for-TV movie.
Our Weekend with Michael Jackson and R. Kelly
Katie came with a record player. I had planned on buying one for myself just about the time we got serious, so when we moved in together, hers became mine, and I was Don Hall-excited about it. I could finally dust off my vinyl collection and give the old discs a spin. The first one I chose was my original pressing of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. At about the third track, the Paul McCartney duet “The Girl is Mine,” Katie asked, “Who is this?”
“Who is this!?” I responded, astounded and slightly confused. “It’s Michael Jackson. It’s Thriller — the second best-selling album of all time.”
“Oh, I don’t like Michael Jackson.”
I immediately questioned our entire relationship and my taste in women. “What!? How can you not like Michael Jackson?
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of March 3, 2019
Few things are funnier than a hysterical person. The R. Kelly interview on CBS This Morning was the best standup comedy I’ve seen since watching Nanette.
Fall & Spring Semesters
My inbox was often empty.
No new messages.
I checked too frequently, never giving it a chance to fill up, never giving my family and friends a chance to think about me.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of February 24, 2019
Personalities can be awful when there’s more than one in a room.
It’s Election Day in Chicago: A Deconstructed Love Story
It’s election day in Chicago, which means it’s the day citizens of this Third Coast Second City bring out their dead to partake in the American right to screw themselves at the polls.
Since its incorporation on March 4, 1837, Chicago has been the place for people who want to be punished. There are the winters, the Cubs and the Bears, the Daley Family, the pot holes, and, of course, the crime. And by crime, I mean the politicians and the police. Yes, the city has its positives, too. There’s the lake and its shoreline, the architecture, the Blackhawks, Stephanie Izard, the excitement of not knowing whether the improv show you’re about to see is going to be incredible or give you cause to wish for a swift and vicious cancer to eat you and every player on stage alive.
Chicago, we don’t deserve better — we’ve done this to ourselves for almost two hundred years — but we should want better. And if we’re as tough as we brag to be, we can have it.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of February 17, 2019
• Forgiveness is not valued enough. And too often, it’s not even attempted. And that’s why we’re doomed.
• I feel a crushing amount of guilt and regret for thinking that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an attractive person. I feel the same way about Ivanka Trump.
Letting Go of the Things We Love
Gun to head, I’d have told you I was a leg man over a boobs guy and meant it. So much so, that in my early-twenties, after talking about it for years, I finally stole a mannequin leg from a mall department store. Okay, I didn’t steal it, my friend, Chris Gallant stole it. We were walking out of Dillards (maybe it was Robinsons-May), and I was saying, again, how badly I wanted to steal one of those legs. Chris, tired of the same old talk and no action, grabbed a leg decked out in DKNY thigh-high pantyhose just before exiting through the automatic doors. We barely picked up our pace as we headed to the car.
“Here’s your fucking leg,” he said.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of February 10, 2019
Valentine’s Day isn’t a dumb holiday. It’s a day of self-help. Valentine’s Day gives you the opportunity to manage your anxiety, pride, and feelings of loneliness. And according to Brian Sweeney, it’s the best day to eat ass and gargle nut.
Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas: Advice from a Former Las Vegan to the Valley’s Newest
At the time of this writing, my friend and former Chicago-based poet, model, and musician, Dana Jerman is residing in her new home in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her husband, co-editor of Literate Ape, longtime storyteller mainstay, and man with a complicated relationship with his feet, Don Hall is just three days out from loading up the last vestiges of their Chicago life — forty years between the two of them — into his Prius to make the drive west and begin a new adventure in a part of America Joseph Smith once referred to as a “great place to do anal with child brides and legally take money from the Jews.”
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of February 3, 2019
Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is an opportunity. Knowledge is cunning.
Woke Super Bowl Commercials
Volkswagen – “Schindler’s Car”
Popular VW models transform into one another through the decades bringing us to today.
[V.O. – MAN]
A lot has changed in eighty years.
The way we live. The way we drive. The way we don’t kill Jews.
The all new 2019 Volkswagen Jetta. It’s not a Jew killer.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of January 27, 2019
It’s too soon to write Howard Schultz off as yet another oligarch or self-serving rich pud like Ross Perot with a self-righteous taste for the presidency. Just as I think it’s too soon to think that AOC is the Second Coming of Christ. Give them time. Maybe things’ll play out different than we assume. Maybe.
A Life Lesson from the Frozen Mailman
Perhaps he turned down my offer to warm up, thaw his beard, and revive his nose because he knew, as too many of us never learn or learn too late, that once you stop something you set out to achieve, it’s nearly impossible to start again.
How do you want to be defined? By one action? By some opinion that could evolve? By a mistake, regrettable only with hindsight? Or by the sum of your parts? Okay, do that for other people. Start the trend.