Tutoring Chicago’s Got Talent, or Hey Kids, Let’s Put on a Show at The Store
Tutoring Chicago’s Got Talent is a variety show featuring volunteer tutors and their friends performing music, comedy, poetry, and more. Current and potential volunteers and supporters will have a chance to socialize while enjoying the show. Donations and proceeds from raffle ticket sales will go to benefit Tutoring Chicago.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of October 13, 2019
The Eagles are a grossly overrated band. Separate from that, Hotel California might be the most terrible song ever recorded. Worse, yes, than Rebecca Black’s Friday.
The Throwing Muse
Here’s what’s wrong with Eric and Marie: Eric is a twenty-eight-year-old writer. He’s alright at it and lives off of it when it pays well, which is most of the time, and he’s made a comfortable space for he and Marie in their marriage in the world. But as of the past two months, and for no particular reason, Eric has the unfortunate luck to be experiencing what writers sometimes call a "block," which some claim does not really exist and others claim can be all but deadly. This is Eric’s problem.
Hope Idiotic | Part 14
CHUCK CLAIMED HE WAS ATTENDING AA MEETINGS ON A REGULAR BASIS. So each morning, Melvin stuck his nose right into Chuck’s open mouth and told him to breathe. These closed-door sessions were disguised as short, daily program meetings so as not to drum up any suspicion that something covert was going on. Not that anyone could have guessed that Chuck was allowing his superior to huff his morning breath.
The Minutes of Our Last Meeting | Kellyanne and George Conway Eat Dinner
Nothing can taint my experience of enjoying this steak.
Losing a Best Friend 10 Years Later — Remembering Mike Zigler
On Friday, October 16, 2009, one of my best friends, Mike Zigler, died.
It was a stupid death. One that was completely avoidable if Zigler hadn’t been the man he was, and maybe, if I hadn’t left Las Vegas two years before to continue my life in Chicago. When people ask me how he died I joke and say, “With his hands at two and ten” — the textbook instruction on where a driver should place their hands on the steering wheel. Zigler died in his car, in the garage of my Las Vegas house, which he was renting from me.
Book Club Made Me Read It | Sophie's Choice
This sheer meaninglessness, is one of the key overarching themes of Sophie’s Choice. It’s a book that seems frequently to yearn towards meaning and yet has strong undercurrents of nihilism.
![I Believe... [Baby Boomers With a Christian Bale Growl]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/579fa3912994ca0eff850271/1570460748620-5XM6MIXAANNO10XTD9KD/chimpballs.jpg)
I Believe... [Baby Boomers With a Christian Bale Growl]
…that nothing is more true about the Baby Boomer generation than the truth about The Dark Knight: “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Remember that Batman was always the hero.
Hope Idiotic | Part 13
She spent the majority of her day sitting at that wall unit writing summary judgments and answering the flurry of emails that poured in. Many of them were only one or two sentences — conversations that could have been easily had over the phone in less time and with less interruption to her train of thought. There’s nothing more distracting for a working writer than to have an email notification going off in the corner of the computer screen every other minute. When she needed a moment to think, she would lean back in her chair and look at the shelf just above her computer at the two framed photographs of her and Lou.
I Like To Watch | Enter the Mollusk (2019)
When I watched Vincent Truman and David Himmel’s Enter the Mollusk, I laughed… hard. It’s both very funny and very on point as all good parody should be. The characters are all very recognizable for someone with my personal connection and yet are universal to someone unfamiliar. Sending up all the pretense and pompous posturing of the entire Chicago storytelling community with a laser-like focus on The Moth in specific.
Peach Pie — Of Memory, Family, and Home
To mine this impulse buried into everything deep. From the urge to take selfies to the number of children one believes it necessary to have in order to establish a family. Knitted into consumption, desire and expression is this essence which expands and contracts like a lung whose air is self-esteem and self-worth.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of October 7, 2019
It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it that matters. I’ve said this before, and yet, some people still don’t get it. Maybe it’s the way I’m saying it.
Windy City Empire Singer-Songwriter Night at The Store in Chicago
Hope Idiotic | Part 12
What kind of a boyfriend was he? What kind of a man lets his girlfriend of two years — a close friend for eight years before that — foot the bill for her big thirtieth birthday trip?
The Minutes of Our Last Meeting: Improv is Hard
The suggestion is “spatula”. It’s always going to be spatula.
I Like to Watch | Unbelievable (Netflix)
While I understand the argument that no one can genuinely empathize with someone else’s journey — the most recent of these is that white people can’t possibly understand the trials of being black in America — I believe we have to at least try or eventually faction off into castes and tribes with no attempt at finding anything resembling common interest. Stories give us that chance.
Notes From the Harrison Hills
This is the sort of thing you’re not supposed to do — wander around off-trail. I wonder if I’ve made a critical mistake, but I don’t feel particularly alarmed or concerned about the situation I’ve gotten myself into. Does that mean I’m rightly assessing that this is fine? I’m not that far off-trail, I know there are roads and ATV trails that crisscross this whole area, and I know which direction to head. Or is my nonchalance the same kind of unearned confidence that got that Into the Wild idiot killed?
![I Believe... [The Quixote Zone]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/579fa3912994ca0eff850271/1569950383125-89HOAYIE9RHRUCBU0LYU/chimpballs.jpg)
I Believe... [The Quixote Zone]
…that we have now entered the Quixote Zone when old men declaring they are knights, reality stars declaring they are presidents, and the very declaration that you are defined by your belief in your own, specific reality contrary to every indicator otherwise is normal.
Hope Idiotic | Part 11
In the dining room, the party was getting more and more raucous. Music was blaring as it competed for dominance over the laughter. One sixty-year-old woman referred to one of the women in her quilting group as “a total cunt.” Gifts set aside, Lou, Michelle, Chuck and Lexi joined in.
Chris Churchill Saves the World | How "The Walking Dead" Helped Me Feel My Feelings
I love The Walking Dead for a lot of reasons. But here’s the reason I’m so loyal to it:
When I was nineteen years old, committed to the psych ward, sitting across from my first psychiatrist, Dr. Bolan, he explained it to me. He told me I had a panic disorder (a diagnosis that subsequent psychiatrists haven’t necessarily focused on but one that seems to encapsulate a big part of my problem). He compared my brain to a house with many rooms, all of which had a light switch to be turned on when something worried me. As he explained, most people can turn the light on and then, when it was no longer needed (i.e., the thing that worries you is gone), they can turn the light off. People with a panic disorder cannot turn the lights off once they get turned on.
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.