this guy goes to my old high school.i don't even know what to say about that. it's like it's so funny i can't even laugh, or it's so fucked up i just don't even know how to process it. either way i'm scared he's gonna arrest me for posting his picture. and yet...



wow. that is seriously the most terrifying white 19 year old of all time.

why the fuck didn't anyone tell me about Dragonforce before?  look at all these fucking people who knew about it:

yet somehow i'm just now finding out about this shit?  fuck you guys, seriously.

as if that weren't enough I finally got a hold of Sleep's Dopesmoker: over 60 minutes of churning, brutal, riff-tastic stoner metal.  one album, one song.  fucking awesome. 

oh.  just so you guys know, i finished Hypocritical Mass #3 over the weekend.  Should be printing 'em some time later this week.  Get ready for awesomeness.

- laminate my social security card
- drink a beer wherever
- take stuff from a store, pay for it the next time i come in
- mail fraud / pyramid scam
- sleep on the beach
- build a gentle giant robot
- build fangs for mouth, bite public property
- make an illegal cake somehow (drugs?  terror threat?  not sure)
- deface "Shampoozled" ads - make it clear they are just shampoo ads.
- commit crimes in general, pass out in White House.

China Station
corner of North & Western

These fuckers put french fries in their appetizer platter.  Seriously.

Cover from today's Redeye:

Wow.  Good job guys.  Seriously, way to take a stand on something.  Me personally, I'm against murder.  I think it's wrong. 

Put me on the cover of the fucking newspaper.

Edit: Fuck it.  I'll do it myself.

So today at Starbucks I ordered my iced coffee and an oatmeal cranberry bar.  Yeah.  I go to Starbucks.  Fuck off.

So I order and get my total (one million dollars) and hand her my debit card and then I notice the rack of CDs next to the register.  It's all Coldplay and you know, Maroon 5... anything bland and inoffensive.  So I see an accoustic version of Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill."  I smile super wide, point to it, and ask the girl behind the register, "Is it too late to add on an Alanis CD?"

She smiles super wide right back at me and says, "Not at all!  I can add that right on for you!"

This is totally understandable.  It's like the best selling album by a female artist of all time.  Why would it be a joke? 

It goes both ways though.

Yesterday I was in line at Dunkin Donuts buying a bagel.  I didn't want them to toast it for me becuase, you know, then you get it back and sit down to eat it and it's cold.  Then you have to toast it again and it's double toasted.  Bah. 

So I'm in line and I order the bagel and the guy behind the counter asks me if I want it toasted.  I say "no."  So he's cutting the bagel in half and I get a little concerned that he's gonna spread cream cheese on the bagel for me.  Sometimes they do that, you know?  If he spread cream cheese on that untoasted bagel I'd be totally fucked - how am I gonna stick that in a toaster, right?  So I ask him, you know, "Hey!  The cream cheese is on the side, right?"

He walks back over, hands me the bag with the bagel in it, and says "Yeah, we stopped putting the cream cheese on after the multiple deaths."

I smiled and said "Yeah," because I wasn't listening to a word he said.  He gave me a weird look and after a minute or so I knew I was missing something.  "Wait... what?" I asked.

"I said we stopped putting the cream cheese on after the multiple deaths," he said.

"Oh.  Ha ha!"  Then I bailed because, you know, bagel time.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm having a pretty boring week.

    But first, of course, they must be found. Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, all the rest of them I can't name, they all went through the same rigorous screening process as the untold thousands of rejects. Cross country Greyhound rides. Sleeping on concrete if you can sleep at all. Waiting in line for hours just for a chance to shine, only to be in and out of the group audition in a matter of minutes. If you were anywhere near Soldier Field this past Friday, you could hear their hopeful songs floating through the ether, a cacophony of falsettos flexing in the parking lot. By late afternoon though, the massive mob of hopeful competitors had been reduced to a small gathering of rejects.

    "It's kind of a cattle call, a karaoke competition," said Patrick, a contestant from Buffalo, New York with immaculately tousled hair and a popped denim collar. After getting rejected at the Boston tryout, him and his friend Danielle rode a Greyhound for twelve hours just for another shot.

    "The show is looking for someone who's like a diamond in the rough," Patrick said. "They want someone who looks like they haven't really figured out their style yet and has a voice they think could be worked on with a coach. That way, when they're on the show and they make it far they can say 'Look what we did for this person!' and take credit for their success. I think that's what it boils down to. I'm not blasting the show-that's the entertainment business."
    His friend Danielle performed "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" by Whitney Houston and was bitterly rejected. It's her sixth audition-four last season, and two this year. "They said if I was standing on a stage and did what I did in front of 20,000 people, they would probably get up and get hot dogs," she told me.

    We talked for a while and I thanked them for their time, but Patrick wasn't letting me get away that easily.

    "Aren't you curious about how we sing?" he asked. "I mean, you know-people should know if they're kicking good people out or not."

I had no choice, really. He grabbed the microphone out of my hands and launched into a version of "Lean On Me" so loud that I had to turn down my levels. I wish I could say it was terrible, but it was pretty good in that overly soulful, throat-warbling American Idol kind of way. When he was done, his friend Danielle grabbed the mic and belted out "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," which also sounded pretty good. I guess you have to be pretty sure of yourself if you're going to ride a Greyhound across the country for the American Idol tryouts-particularly if you've already been rejected five times.

    The sight of a microphone to an American Idol hopeful is like the sight of heroin to a junkie, though, and quite a few people lined up to get their fix. One girl sang an atonal rendition of some song about having to get home in the morning, and how her "baby wouldn't understand." While she sang, another girl started singing about ten feet away loud enough to drown her out. "Falling in loovvveee, with Jeeeeessuuusssss, was the best thing I evvvvveeerrrr did," she sang, then repeated it, over and over, exploring every tonal permutation, running up and down the scales on every syllable of every word.

    "That sounds pretty good," I said.

    "Yeah, well, live and learn! American Idol rejects, baby! Woo! I'm out!" she said, then turned and walked away.

    Most of the people I talked to received a sort of form letter rejection. A guy named Henry from Madison, Wisconsin summed it up succinctly. "They told us all we're not what they're looking for, and that the level of last year's competition was so high, which it wasn't. Basically, all of it was scripted. That's what they told them to say to everyone. All of us were voted out and they all said the same thing. What can you do?" he said.

    I asked him if he would try out again next year. "I can't. I'm 28, so this is my first and my last," he told me.

    Bummer.

    Most of the people I talked to didn't seem very bitter about the rejection. I don't think many of them really thought they had a shot. Most of the people I talked to were local. Brandon, a recent Chicago transplant from Kansas City, came out to support his girlfriend. He wasn't planning on trying out, but decided to at the last minute. "I'm a singer, but I wasn't gonna try out," he told me. "I didn't think I was American Idol material. Neither did they, apparently."

    Another Chicago local named Jarmell was knocked out in the first round. "I messed up a little bit, but I'm cool with it. This first year is just a trial for me to see what it's all about. Next year is gonna be the year I actually, like, SING sing," he told me.

    The people from out of town were a different story. One kid named Jordan came all the way from Pennsylvania and got shut down-again. "I made it to the second round in Boston and then I got cut, so I was trying again," he told me. "I got out in the first round this time, which makes absolutely no sense. I figured I'd at least make the second round. I don't think these people know what they're talking about."

    I talked to a guy named Otis who said the judges told him he needed more personality. I practically fell asleep while he was telling me about it. Then I ended up talking to Patrick again, the kid from Buffalo who called the show a "glorified karaoke competition." He went on to explain why, despite the fact that he rode across the country on a Greyhound bus to try out, he didn't actually want to be the next American Idol. "People haven't really gone far from it except Kelly Clarkson, and who knows what's gonna happen to Carrie [Underwood]," he said. "Her stage presence sucks! She's pretty and she can sing, but she doesn't have a fire. I think Kelly Clarkson definitely had a fire but nobody else. I'd like to see her get a little more stage presence. I think they might be working on that with her because Simon pointed it out a few times, and so did Paula and Randy. I wish her the best-she's the best one since Kelly."

    The batteries in my minidisc recorder died a little bit after that, right around when he started telling me about how the show has gotten a lot more "commercial" since it first started. By then it was getting late anyway, and the last of the rejects were starting to pack up their things and prepare for the long ride home. Some would take the CTA. Others would ride Greyhound or American Airlines. All would return to work or school or their couches the following Monday, while one, just one-because there can only be ONE true American Idol, right?-would stay inside Soldier Field for the rest of the day. That person would go on through the elimination rounds and on to the finals. They might even make it through to compete on the actual show. And maybe, just maybe, they will one day win and become the next Kelly Clarkson, depending on how America votes, but for the rest of us it's back to work, back to school, back to couches and cheap burgers and watching American Idol from the other side of the screen. For me, it was off to the bus stop to catch a ride home. All the way there I could hear their cries from across the street, the choruses of "Amazing Grace" and "Turn The Beat Around" and a bunch of songs I didn't recognize mixing together into a continuous medley of overlapping keys. I put on my headphones and walked toward the bus stop, when a thought popped into my head.

    "Gee," I thought to myself, "I wonder what's on TV tonight?"

i'm completely broke until tomorrow when my paycheck goes through.  really superbroke.  i have maybe six or seven bucks in my bank account.  sucko. 

a few weeks ago i swiped a coworker with my train card.  we joked about it like "hey, guess you'll owe me a train ride!" he looked kind of surprised when i took him up on it yesterday.  i'm BROKE. 

so i'm on my lunchbreak and a homeless guy rolls up to me with all these packages.  he stops me and two other guys and says "gentlemen!  i need 2 bucks to get on the train so i don't have to walk with all these packages."  he actually said that.  i was about to tell him how i am also bumming cta rides today so, you know, that kind of makes us brothers, right?  i was gonna say something about it but i didn't because, you know, homeless people hate irony. 

so later i'm at the liquor store locking up my bike.  the only reason i'm at the liquor store is because i sold some cds and dvds to allow myself the luxury of chicken for dinner and beer for dessert. 

ludacris would be so proud.

so i'm locking my bike up and this homeless dude rolls up.  he's got a plastic bag in his hand and holds it out and says "you wanna buy some cds man?"  i finish locking my bike up and turn around to him and kind of chuckle.  he looks at me kind of weird, so i point to my bike tire.

"i just sold a bunch of cds myself, actually.  i used the money to fix the front tire on my bike, cuz i don't even have any money to take public transportation right now."

dude looks at me for a second, then points to the tire.  "so it's fixed then?"

"yeah.  it's fixed now." 

he looks back up at me, squints, and says "i'll sell you any of these.  2 bucks each."

homeless people hate irony.