My gmail must be broken

It’s been one of those long, exhausting days at work, and not one friend has chimed in with a friendly email as a balm to soothe my weary soul. Not one. Stupid friends.

Plus, our building management decided long ago that the workday ends at 5:00, and any poor suckers too stupid to stay in the building after that do not deserve fresh circulating air. Since it’s muggy and rainy outside today, it’s muggy and sweltering inside our office tonight. It feels like a jungle in here. Or a third-world laundromat. Or a mouth.

And while I’m being a big whiny victim, let me also complain about the new MacBook I got upgraded to at work last week. So far the computer itself is pretty nice, with noticeably faster speed and a keyboard that doesn’t have the last user’s crumbs under the keys and a slight whiff of new-computer smell every time I fire it up. It also came loaded with OS 10.5.2, which is—as far as my needs are concerned—basically the same but different compared to the operating system I’ve been using for the last year and a half. And it has a built-in camera above the screen. Call me paranoid, but I put a strip from a Post-It note over the lens because the last thing I need is some video circulating on the Internets of me doing something embarrassing at work like picking my nose or wearing last season’s Old Navy or scratching in a way that could be interpreted as an audition for Your Mama Don’t Dance. But that’s not what I’m complaining about. I’m complaining because my new MacBook came loaded with Microsoft Word 12.1.0, which sucks more than a family-values politician in a blowjob factory. I spend the vast majority of my workday in Word, and this stupid generation of what I already view as a stupid piece of software has built-in formatting defaults like automatic spacing after each paragraph that apparently can’t be globally overridden. I thought the Republicans were giving us less government. So how come they leave the subprime-mortgage and the poisonous-toy and the hate-a-fag-for-Jesus industries unregulated but I’m robbed of free choice every time I write a copy deck? Why?

But I can’t dwell on all that right now. I have to reformat some paragraphs manually. And fan myself discreetly. And check my gmail for any notes from my friends that may have gotten delayed in transit. Just in case.

Stupid friends.

Shhhhh!

Don't tell him I told you, but the domestic partner is 35 today.

He's not big on birthdays or all the attention that comes with them—in fact, we had dinner last night with friends and he wouldn't let me tell them his birthday was just moments away—but this is my blog and I love him and I just want to share with the the world how happy I am he was born. And that we met. And that he loves me back. And that he folds our laundry so nicely. Seriously, this boy has a FREAKISH talent for making all the shirts and towels in the house look like they're on display in a high-end department store. His mad folding skilz are just a small part of the many ways he really classes up the joint.

In other news, we ran nine miles on Saturday. But Matthew wasn't there with his camera to provide any photographic proof. Then the domestic partner and I helped his best friend move into a charming apartment within walking distance (well, summer walking distance ... I'd hate to make the trudge in February) of our condo. After a hot shower and a long nap, we had the aforementioned non-birthday dinner with our friends and then went to a beautiful-gay-boy party in Boystown. And the guest list was actually populated with nice beautiful gay boys. Plus one hunky shirtless bartender. He also seemed nice, but he was hunky and shirtless so who cares? (And don't get the impression that we habitually go to parties where hot men walk around shirtless—we are not even remotely that interesting—because this was a fund-raiser for a friend who's doing the AIDS Ride next weekend (go here if you want to sponsor him) and the hunky shirtless bartender was just a lure to get everyone to show up and cough up some sponsorship money. And it totally worked!)

On today's actual-birthday docket: family brunch, presents, birthday dinner, show tunes. And a couple demure pecks on the cheek to show him that I still love him despite his rapidly advancing age. I'm a good boyfriend like that.

ChicagoRound: Billy Goat Tavern

Cheezborger! Cheezborger! Cheezborger!

The Billy Goat Tavern has been a part of the Chicago burgers-and-beers landscape since 1934, but it wasn't until 1978 that it became world-famous in a series of Saturday Night Live sketches that lovingly mocked the chopped language of its Greek owners and staff.

And yes, they still talk that way when you order off their limited, greasy and altogether delicious menu.

The flagship Billy Goat Tavern sits under Michigan Avenue, near the Wrigley Building. Shoppers on the Magic Mile between the Wrigley Building and the Gap probably don't realize they're actually on a bridge above a vast subterranean world of streets, parking lots, delivery bays ... and the Billy Goat. Here's the sign at the entrance to the tavern, with the underbelly of Michigan Avenue just beyond the white pillars:


And here's the garish but still relatively modest front door, complete with billy goat-themed puns and a proud nod to the SNL skit that put the Billy Goat on America's cultural map:

I am weak

I bought a package of Chips Ahoy!® brand chocolate chip cookies to work yesterday with the intention of nibbling on one or two a day for the next few weeks. We don’t keep cookies in the house because the domestic partner doesn’t trust himself around the irresistible deliciousness of pre-packaged snacks. I, however, have long maintained that I am in complete control of myself in the presence of uniformly stacked circles of crumbly brown-sugary goodness flecked with melty bits of chocolate. At least at home.

Because today when I reached in my food drawer for a couple cookies, I found nothing but apples and oatmeal and low-fat granola bars. Because apparently I HAD EATEN THE ENTIRE BAG OF CHIPS AHOY!® BRAND CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES YESTERDAY.

I. am. so. ashamed.

Thankfully, I still have a bag of really shitty candy-coated chocolate Easter eggs in my other drawer. And I am totally able to eat them in moderation. Because they taste like Barbie shoes. But they contain chocolate, which is one of the essential writer food groups … along with Diet Pepsi, honey-roasted peanuts and bitter regret.

But with only a few morsels of plastic chocolate in my belly, it’s been a long, long day. Longer than a conference call in a sun-baked meeting room. Longer than watching Dubya try to recite the alphabet in order. Longer than there’ve been fishes in the ocean. Higher than any bird ever flew. Longer than there’ve been stars up in the heavens.

God, I need a cookie.

Our first Magic Mile!

I know. It's a totally gay name for our sprint training. But "MM" fits unobtrusively on our scheduling spreadsheet so what can you do?

In any case, we had our first Magic Mile training run on Saturday. And I did OK. We met at the well-appointed quarter-mile track at the tony intersection of Chicago Avenue and Lake Shore Drive. And after our standard rah-rah pre-run talk, we took off. We all ran a mile at our target pace (my group is shooting for 9:00, which is about what I need to maintain to run the marathon in under four hours) and then we sprinted the second mile to see just how fast we could do it. My peeps all stayed together easily for our first mile, but once we took off on our sprint, they quickly left me wheezing in their dust. They finished in the 7:05 range and I wasn't too terribly far behind them, clocking in at 7:33. But I have my work cut out for me.

Once we had all crossed that finish line—and then waited for all the girls to pee—we trotted over to the lakefront and whipped out another 2.5 miles at our target pace. Here we are before that run, smiling and happy in the lovely running weather in front of our lovely lake:

And here we are after the run, with our bulging bellies and our thinner wallets. Since we were downtown, we opted to have our first post-run brunch as a team (even though it was our fourth week training together) someplace kinda fancy. The Pierrot Gourmet—a part of the Peninsula Hotel—does a rustic French-provincial brunch that's full of charm and deliciousness ... only it does it at prices that rustic provincial French people probably can't afford. If you go, try the breakfast bread pudding. But do it only after you've timed yourself on a mile sprint so you have room for all the extra carbs.

Pop quiz! Do you remember what I'm using to track my training runs? That's correct! I use my fabulous new almost-a-house-payment Garmin™ Forerunner® 405, which comes with a heart monitor, GPS tracking and complimentary valet services. My favorite feature of the watch is the virtual partner, a little animated figure—I call him Beverly d'Angelo—that runs exactly at the pace you program it to maintain. The watch also has a figure representing you—I call this one Jake—that shows you your pace in relation to your virtual partner's, so you can just glance down when you're running and see if you're ahead or behind where you need to be. Which is really handy on longer runs when you can start to lollygag without even realizing it.

Here's what it looks like when Jake is beating the pants off Beverly:

What's even cooler is when you stop for any reason, the GPS knows you've stopped and your little figure bends over as though he's exhausted. Unfortunately, I can't find a screen shot showing you how cute it looks. So I tried to replicate its cuteness Saturday morning for Matthew, but we accidentally captured it facing backward. And I look like I might be pooping. Which I'm pretty sure isn't the visual the Garmin people are going for when their little stick figure collapses, but it's all I've got so you're gonna have to go with me on this one. And by "go" I don't mean "poop." Because I would never ask you to poop with me. That would just be gross. Almost as gross as talking about poop endlessly instead of letting you see the picture. Which looks like this:

And yes, this is one of the first pictures taken of my new, slightly-less-lumpy head. Which I thought might make me more aerodynamic, but since everyone beat me by almost 30 seconds on Saturday I guess I'm wrong. On the plus side, I can now run my fingers through my hair without triggering pain receptors on my scalp. So there's that. And I go to work almost every morning having totally beaten Beverly d'Angelo in a footrace. Which, quite frankly, is probably more than you can say.

At last my head is complete again!

Or something like that.

The bitches stitches are out, the itching has stopped and as soon as they kick us out of work today I'm gonna find a haircut store and get someone to mow my mangy head back into submission.

I keep touching the spots where the bumps were. AND THEY'RE GONE! Though they're still kind of ... um ... moist ... from the gobs of Polysporin® I've been rubbing on them three times a day for the last nine days.

Changing. It keeps changing. I feel smooth spots ... where there were bumps of keratin ...

ChicagoRound: St. Joseph Hospital

St. Joseph Hospital sits at Diversey and Lake Shore Drive in the extreme southeast corner of the Boystown area. More importantly, it overlooks one of the free Gatorade stations set up by Fleet Feet every weekend morning along the lakefront running trail. I've been admiring the building's organic shapes and funky 1962 architecture for eight years, and I love the way the way its aqua accents and its gently undulating pediment reflect the waves of nearby Lake Michigan.

What I had for lunch today

Sandwich: Turkey and pepper jack cheese on wheat bread with a little bit of lettuce (because processed turkey and processed cheese on processed bread needs some crunch if it's gonna go down without a fight)

Salad: Spinach and romaine (because I ran out of spinach this morning) with raspberries, mandarin oranges and fat-free raspberry vinaigrette

Drink: Water (because I'm trying to wean myself off of diet soda) in a sports-themed glass to impress all the chicks (or because it was the only glass glass in our lunchroom cupboard and I prefer not to drink out of plastic because it always smells like ... well ... plastic)

Tranny hot mess!

No, I’m not entirely sure what that means. Or if it indicates that something is good or bad. Or even if it’s what the kids are still saying these days.

But every time I see my hair in the mirror, I do not see something that looks gender-confident, cool or organized.

I’m happy to report that the bumpectomy sites on my head are healing nicely, but the Polysporin® gobs are making an oilfield of my hair. And I didn’t plan my haircut schedule very well around the bump removal; I’m well into the fluffy phase that signals I’m overdue for a trim, but I’m not sure I should have a barber poking around my wounds with a pair of scissors or running a #1.5 guard over my stitches just yet. So I’m just left to hope that the paparazzi leave me alone until the stitches come out on Friday at 10:00 am and I can get to a haircut store to restore order on my noggin.

While the stitched-up wounds still sting a little, the bumps are definitely gone! So my staff of milliners and phrenologists can finally stop with the wringing of hands and the gnashing of teeth. I’ve also had three good runs since the surgery, and the sweat on my head hasn’t seemed to cause any healing issues. We cranked out eight miles on Saturday morning at our 9-minute-mile target marathon pace—which I am clearly not quite ready for—but then I ran four easy, breezy miles this morning ... and when I finished, my fancy new GPS-enabled running watch told me that I’d done them all at an 8:51 pace. Which is, for me, actually pretty huge. The crowd goes wild!

Plus, I’m wearing my muffin-top jeans today that usually fit only in the latter stages of marathon training. And they’re not cutting off any vital circulation. So far. In fact, they feel pretty comfortable. But I’m still leaving my shirt untucked. And I’m politely declining every request to retrieve something off a high shelf. Because I may be a tranny hot mess, but I’m not about to be a Love-Handle Larry. Whatever that means.

Like I need another hole in my head

I had my lumps removed yesterday!

Well, two of them. So I'm still kinda lumpy.

See, I've had six pilar cysts on my head since as far back as I can remember. Most common in middle-age women (like me!), pilar cysts are little rubbery growths filled with keratin, the building-block protein that generates hair, nails and skin. So by some stretches of the imagination I've been carrying the inchoate members of my septupletude just under my scalp for 40 years and I just murdered my way down to being quintuplets. Or something like that.

In any case, pilar cysts are benign and harmless (like me! except when I murder!) and amount to little more than curious little bumps to be discovered only by people who playfully tousle your hair. (Of course, people who mess up my hair are also subject to murder, but they at least take some guilt with them to the grave.) In the last year, though, two of my little cysts had started hurting. In a pain–pain–pain rhythm synched to my beating heart. And one of them had a tendency to bleed whenever my discount hair stylist nicked it with his discount clippers. So my dermatologist and I decided they should be removed. Unfortunately, scheduling their removal involved a two-month pas de trois coordinating little pieces of information between my insurance carrier, my dermatologist and the scheduling service my dermatologist uses. But everything finally converged yesterday morning, and at 8:30 sharp I finally found myself lying on an examination table while a nurse injected a local anesthetic all around my two condemned little brethren. Which was actually the most painful part.

While she was doing that and then busying herself setting out scalpels and sutures and all the other accoutrements of outpatient surgery, the doctor left the room and came back with a ... clock radio. Seriously.

Nurse! Hand me a scalpel! Now I need a sponge! Now I need some Digital Digital Get Down ... STAT!

When I gave him a quizzical look that said Dude ... do you realize that your sole contribution to the surgery preparation at hand has been to set a a freakin' clock radio on the hospital gown hamper next to the not-for-pretend surgery stuff your nurse is setting out? he explained that since the surgery was on my head and so close to my ears, the cutting and scraping actions of his scalpel would produce squeaking noises that I could actually hear. HOW COOL IS THAT? He told me he brought in the clock radio to drown out the squeaky noises in case they would freak me out. WHICH OF COURSE THEY WOULDN'T. If I got to actually hear myself going from lumpy to smooth (well, less lumpy), I didn't want to miss a single note of it.

I told him I'd really love to hear the squeaking of his scalpel against my lumpy head, but apparently he'd had enough people seriously freak out about it that he insisted on playing music. Unfortunately, his radio got shitty reception in the examination room, so my distraction music was about 20% Billy Joel and about 80% khhhhhhh!

Once the radio had started soothing me with its dulcet tones, the doctor and I began the awkward process of getting me in a position on the table where he could conveniently stab me on the top left side of my head and the back left side of the base of my skull, where my two condemned little brethren had been residing. The process was made weirder by the fact that the anesthetic was actually making me light-headed as it oozed past my lumps and deep into my hooker-and-porn-addled brain. And also because I was wearing only underwear and a hospital gown that kept falling off every time I rolled over to try a new position.

But we eventually found a workable position with me on my stomach and my arms smooshed up under my chest and neck like a mummy, and the doctor commenced hacking away at my poor condemned little brethren. And I'm sad to report that the acoustics in my head are such that I don't think I would have heard any squeaking even if Neil Sedaka hadn't been crackling on the fire next to me.

Once the doctor had pulled the first little dead brother lump of keratin out of my head, he (jokingly, I presume) asked me if I wanted to see it. Is the pope a boy-raping drag queen? OF COURSE I WANTED TO SEE IT.

On a completely unrelated note here, I've spent the last month relaunching a web site for a well-known client that offers lawn improvement programs including fertilizers, weed killers and the elimination of destructive, unsightly pests like grubs. In fact, just this week I finished writing about grubs. White, wiggly, disgusting, pus-like grubs. Which made it completely ironic—but still apropos of nothing—when I lifted my head from my little mummy pose and saw dangling right in front of me in the doctor's tweezers a lump of bloody, hairy keratin that looked like ... Rush Limbaugh's tiny little penis. Or a grub, now that I think about it.

Which. Was. Totally. Cool. Rush Limbaugh imagery notwithstanding.

Even cooler: The second incision disgorged two grub-like lumps of keratin. It was like I'd won the Disgusting Things Growing Under Your Scalp Jackpot!

By then, the clock radio reception had taken a turn for the worse, so the nurse hit some button and it switched to a talk-radio program. Which was fine until I started paying attention ... and I heard a husky female proclaim that the day's topic of discussion was "embracing your biblical femininity." Which, in combination with just having seen Rush Limbaugh's tiny little penis, was a little too much excitement for one morning.

Fortunately, I was soon sutured up, slathered with a couple protective, nourishing gobs of Polysporin® and sent on my way with strict instructions not to drink alcohol for 24 hours. Even though I'd just been forced to look at Rush Limbaugh's tiny little penis.

And it seemed like I was healing nicely until a couple hours later when the local anesthetic wore off in the middle of a client call and holy shit it felt like bickering monkeys were scaling my slightly less lumpy head with pickaxes.

But thanks to a bottle of OTC pain relievers and some panic-inducing (and therefore suitably distracting) deadlines, I survived the day without harming any monkeys.

After work, some co-workers and I took some clients to a Cubs game. I hadn't counted on it being colder than the pope's dead, black heart by late afternoon and I was woefully underdressed. So I stopped to buy a Wrigley Field shirt on my way in. And by the time I got to our seats I discovered we were sitting in two rows ... and my empty seat was in the front, putting the gooey back of my head directly in the sightlines of one of the clients who make my salary possible. Concerned that the sight of my pulsing wound would make him vomit his pizza rolls all over my professional future, I discreetly sent my colleague (who was sitting next to him) the international symbol for Does it look like I've been shot or stabbed in the base of my skull and my hair is now clotted with blood and brain matter that is in reality just a protective, nourishing gob of Polysporin®? He responded with the international symbol for Dude, can I have some of your nachos? Which I took to be polite-in-front-of-the-client code for No.

Here's the view from our kick-ass seats:

The Cubs won, by the way. Even without my lucky lumps in attendance. And I didn't freeze—or bleed—to death. And my head actually felt better by the end of the game. But it was still oozy. So before I climbed into bed I stuffed my pillow and its 800-thread-count pillowcase in a protective, blood-stain-colored T-shirt. Because a less lumpy head deserves a fancy elitist lifestyle. Which always starts with an unstained pillowcase.

Sponsor me in the AIDS Marathon!

Last year, my friends and family and co-workers and even strangers like you who occasionally drop by to read my blog—and how cool are you?—helped me raise $3,001 in donations when I ran the Chicago Marathon on behalf of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. This year will be my fifth marathon, my third with the AIDS Foundation and my first with the foundation’s new advanced training program, which promises to help me FINALLY beat my four-hour goal.

But running a marathon in under four hours is just a goal of vanity. People living with HIV and AIDS have much more important goals … like staying healthy so they can go to work and afford insurance and medical care and food for themselves and their families.

Despite ongoing advances in the treatment of AIDS, the epidemic is far from over. More than one million Americans—and 40 million more around the world—are now living with HIV. It’s no longer the gay disease once self-righteously dismissed by the religious right; it’s now the LEADING cause of death among adults age 15-59 worldwide—gay or straight, black or white, male or female. The LEADING cause. That’s a lot of people who are not only sick, but potentially homeless, jobless, ostracized, trying to raise children or otherwise in desperate need of what the AIDS Foundation provides.

So please. Whip out your credit card, click on the red logo above or to your right and join me in our race to control—and maybe even beat—this disease.

You’ll get a tax writeoff. The AIDS Foundation will get much-needed funds for providing direct medical care, food, housing and other vital services for people living with HIV and AIDS. Your friends and neighbors living with the disease will get assistance and dignity and hope. And I will maybe get to beat a goal that’s been taunting me since 2004. Everybody wins!

Remember: Sponsoring me is as easy as clicking the red logo. And thanks again for your generosity!

Jake

P.S. It can take up to five business days for your donations to be acknowledged on my pledge page. But the AIDS Foundation of Chicago has been extremely prompt at mailing acknowledgement letters for tax deductions. And after the marathon I'll post a list of donors here AND send personal thank-you notes and emails to all of you for whom I have contact information. But please don’t let the site's weird little technical problem stop you from donating. You can give any amount you want.

My new best friends:

My new AIDS Marathon training group had its first official all-as-a-group run Saturday morning, and here we are posing triumphantly for our first group picture.

Well, most of us. We ran six miles at our target marathon speed of 9-minute miles. But some of us (ahem) aren't quite capable of sustaining that speed on longish runs just yet, and we clocked in at 9:12 miles. And by the time we crossed the finish line, some of the faster folks had grown impatient in the excruciatingly long wait and had moved on to bigger and better Saturday-morning activities. So they missed the picture.

Which, in a few rambling sentences, sums up my initial impression of our probable group dynamic this summer. I hope I'm wrong, but I just didn't get the feeling that we're going to bond over hours of chatty run gossip and post-run brunches the way last two summers' groups did. In fact, Saturday's post-run group brunch consisted of: me and Matthew and the domestic parter, who is running in a different group. But the brunch still included pancakes, and that's really all you can ask of a brunch.

After we got cleaned up, the domestic partner and I went to his niece's first communion at Our Lady of the Mumbling Pastor in one of Chicago's lovely northern suburbs. I wore a brand new shirt that I discovered was noticeably too big in the neck once I got my tie tied, but I wasn't in the mood to re-think my entire wardrobe, so I probably look like I've been on a hunger strike in all the family photos. After the mass, which featured a parade of impossibly adorable second-graders, we retired to the domestic partner-in-laws' house for food, food, more food and exceptionally delicious cake, followed by a couple hours of Barbies and Disney princesses in the nieces' well-appointed playroom. Because nothing says gay uncles like a couple hours of Barbies and Disney princesses. Even when one of the uncles looks like he's playing dress-up in his daddy's shirt.

Today was going to start with another run, but it was freaking 48 degrees and rainy here in not-so-springy Chicago. AS. IF. So we did Plan B: brunch in Chicago's originally-Swedish-but-now-just-gay Andersonville neighborhood. Then we went shopping in its charming originally-Swedish-but-now-just-gay boutiques, where I found the perfect buffet for our dining room ... assuming the domestic partner and I master the art of shitting money. Then we went to a Mother's Day showing of Mommie Dearest at the architecturally fabulous Music Box Theatre. The event included Joan Crawford impersonators, a Joan Crawford look-alike contest and a performance by The Joans, which is probably the world's only Joan Crawford-themed punk rock band. But I'm too lazy to google it to make sure, so I could be wrong.

We closed our whirlwind day of gay clichés at Sidetrack for a couple hours of show tunes tonight. In between the belting divas, I got to play wingman for a buddy who was working a hunky little Italian in the back bar, which isn't so crowded and loud so you can have actual conversations when you're there. Wingman, as you may know, isn't always an easy job. You have to be cute and interesting and approachable, but considerably less cute and interesting and approachable than your leading man. You have to stay alert and keep on top of the situation in case you have to jump in and play emergency rescue boyfriend at a moment's notice. And you have to know when to get the hell out of the way so you don't get hit by flying sparks. Because collateral spark burns are rarely covered by basic insurance plans. Unfortunately, I don't think there was a love connection tonight, but the hunky little Italian was very nice. And distractingly hunky. Not that I was noticing.

Miles away from the finish

So we’re—what?—six days into marathon training and I’m already injured. My left calf seized up on Tuesday, but I ran on it anyway. BIG MISTAKE. I’ve had a limp since then, and the damn thing is still tender to the touch.

So today the domestic partner and I went to see a lawyer. Which, as a sentence, should win me some kind of misleading-transition award. Because we went to the lawyer to finally set up wills, powers of attorney and everything else you need to keep yourself legally protected when the American Taliban has made sure you can’t get the basic protections of marriage.

So we sat for an hour in nice leatherback chairs and discussed with a dude who had been up until then a complete stranger to us exactly who gets our stuff when we die (Nick Lachey!), who gets to make decisions about our health should we be come incapacitated (Tom Welling!) and who should be first in line to give us mouth-to-mouth resuscitation (James Marsden!) should we fall into an unconscious swoon. We should get a rough draft of all our documents in a week or so, which we will dutifully read during Family Guy commercials. Then we’ll sign everything in the presence of witnesses and we’ll be one fabulous party with delicious cake away from being as legally married as we possibly can.

And when my calf heals, I’ll be using my left leg to kick anyone in the face who tells people we’re somehow a “threat” to traditional marriage. Because there’s no use exacerbating an injury right at the top of training season.

ChicagoRound: angles and circles

This parking garage sits on a grassy lot at the south end of the Loop. I've always been fascinated by its pedestrian geometry of angles and parallels—they were clearly designed around the building's function as a ramp with little regard for its outer aesthetic. Its workaday blandness is jarring and ugly in juxtaposition to the soaring architecture around it ... and yet I still find it to be strangely beautiful. It's kind of like a pug at a greyhound convention:


The RedEye is a tabloid offshoot of the Chicago Tribune. Launched in 2002 (in ill-timed competition with the strikingly similar but short-lived Red Streak, a tabloid offshoot of the Chicago Sun-Times), it's written by lazy, one-source writers for lazy, one-celled readers who apparently find detailed content to be burdensome and off-putting. The RedEye's sole creative achievement is its iconic red i-shaped dispensers that stand on every other street corner in the city. The orb-like red dot on the top of each dispenser originally featured a bold white FREE on each side, but creative vandals all across Chicago have spent the last few years picking at the Fs and the Rs so that it's hard to find a dispenser today that doesn't proudly proclaim "I PEE":

It's that time again

Time to make sure I'm in bed every Friday at a reasonable hour. Time to stock up on sunscreen and laundry detergent. Time to ask everyone I know—and don't know, for that matter—for money. Time to start blogging endlessly about my running and eating and pooping schedules. Time to start training for this year's Chicago Marathon!

After doing two marathons on my own in less than 4:30 and two marathons with the AIDS Marathon training program (which is designed just to get people across a finish line) in the 5:00+ range, I was intending to train on my own again this summer. BECAUSE I MUST BEAT FOUR HOURS. But then the AIDS Marathon developed a new advanced program for people looking to hit a specific time goal. So I'm back on board ... and slightly nervous about what's in store for me.

Our first training run started Saturday morning under bright sun and unseasonable chill ... after we first stood around filling out a ton of forms enumerating our injuries and our goals:


Then we ran three miles as fast as our little legs could carry us so we could get placed in our pace groups. I have no idea what inspired me to dress like I was auditioning for Blue's Clues: The Musical when I knew Matthew would be recording the day on his spiffy new camera:


Unfortunately, our pacing runs happened in multiple heats, and the first finishers in my group didn't stick around so we could all get to know each other. And have our picture taken for my blog. THE. NERVE. So here I am with Peter and Matthew from last year. Peter is in the group ahead of us this year, because he totally kicked our asses on Saturday. Technically, I timed in in the group behind Matthew, but I want to spend the summer coughing up my own lungs, so I promoted myself to his pace group for the summer. I will live to regret this.


The advanced training program requires that we have running watches. I don't even own a real watch because I have a slight birth defect in my wrists: abnormally large pisiforms that make wearing a watch kind of painful. But I really want to beat my 4:00 goal, so I am now the proud owner of a Garmin Forerunner® 405, which monitors my heart rate via a little thing I strap to my moobs, tracks my running distance via GPS satellites and mixes me a vodka tonic after each successful run. It's kind of expensive, but I've never bought a watch in my life, so I simply tapped into 40 years of unspent watch money to pay for it.


While I had my wallet out on Saturday, I also got a fresh pair of Brooks® Adrenaline™ GTS 8s. Benefit #271 of training for a marathon: You get to buy shoes! These shoes have been correcting my pronation and supination issues—and making my feet look huge and manly—for years. My podiatrist—who I'm pretty sure is not an employee of the Brooks company–advised me to replace my running shoes every 100 miles, so I dutifully get a new pair every every spring and every fall. According to the Brooks marketing materials, the company is constantly improving this shoe ... and giving it a new accent color every season. This season's color is yellow, which is so perfect because I totally don't have any yellow shoes yet!



So everything is in place for a fabulous summer of AIDS Marathon training: the shoes, the watch, the little strap for my moobs ... all that's left is the shameless plea for you to sponsor me. But I haven't set up my donor page yet, so you're off the hook for the time being. But take this opportunity now to find your wallet and memorize your credit card number because I'll be begging for money in the near future. You've been warned.

ChicagoRound: Trump International Hotel and Tower

As you've probably heard, I loathe almost everything about Donald Trump and his arrogant blowhardery. But I love the shiny new so-big-it-must-be-overcompensating-for-something hotel and tower he's erecting (ahem) on Wacker Drive at the Chicago River. Scheduled to be completed in 2009, it will be the second-tallest building in Chicago (after the Sears Tower and before the AON Building and the John Hancock Center) ... until it gets trumped (ahem) by Santiago Calatrava's spectacular Chicago Spire in 2011.

The hotel, which opened on January 30, 2008, occupies the first 27 floors of Trump Tower. It is in full operation as the building still rises above it. You can see the cranes on the top of the building in this photo. That's Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's 1973 IBM Building (officially called 330 North Wabash) poking up in the background:


Here's a shot of the front of the Trump Tower taken next to the IBM Building, which is on the right. The structure on the left is an ugly parking garage whose ribbed metal cladding has dripped rust stains all over the sidewalk around it. Wabash Street, which runs in front of Trump Tower, is actually a bridge. I took this picture on Kinzie Street right before it runs under Wabash, so I'm actually standing a story below the first floor of Trump Tower:


Here's the entrance from the actual first floor on Wacker Drive. The squatty parking garage sits directly across the street from the entrance, so I'm not entirely sure what building you see reflected here. The front of Trump Tower does sit at an angle, so the reflection could be the condo tower just to its north:

Here's the view looking west from the cute little plaza behind the Wrigley Building. I'm assuming that funky structure near the bottom of the picture is the parking ramp entrance. You can't see it in this picture, but just to the right is a McDonald's with the coolest chairs. They're pearlescent green, and each one has a giant button in the middle of its back. I may steal a couple for our bedroom. My only complaint about the development of plaza is the stone used for the little walls along the walkways you can see in the bottom right corner. It's a beautiful polished limestone, but it doesn't match any of its surroundings: the gray concrete of the sidewalk, the sleek mirrored cladding of the Trump Tower, the blood-red brick of the McDonald's or the shiny glazed terra-cotta of the Wrigley Building:

WWE are the champions

For reasons I don't want to go into here, there is a lot of World Wrestling Entertainment on in our house. And by "a lot" I mean "every freaking night." And by "every freaking night" I mean "more often than we watch lesbian porn." Which, to be honest, isn't that often. Or ever. But still. Ten minutes of WWE is always a lifetime too much of WWE.

All of which means I am intimately, uncomfortably familiar with every aspect of the WWE experience: The themed costumes. The thundering entrance music. The cartoonish hypermasculinity. The drama-queen histrionics. The preening peacockery. The adult men rolling around together in oversized underpants. The midget in the shiny leprechaun outfit.

I hate to break it to those of you who see the WWE as the final word in red-blooded, woman-lovin' manliness, but that entire last paragraph could easily describe an average night in a gay bar. Or a circuit party. Or a gay cruise. Or my living room on a Tuesday evening. Except for the oversized underpants. In our house, it's low-waisted or the highway. (Sted.)

To its credit, though, WWE offers a slight measure of balance. For every five pompadoured cretins in capri clown pants the WWE puts in its ring, it trots out the likes of John Cena and Randy Orton in all their oily muscled glory. They're like a beefcake sorbet ... a ruggedly handsome intermezzo to cleanse the palate between pompadours.

And following in the spirit of the WWE, I'm trotting out these demigods here to balance out the five cretinous paragraphs in capri clown pants I've made you read so far. Behold:

John Cena

Randy Orton

I'm embarrassed to report that I often put down whatever I'm doing so I can watch these two whenever they're on our TV. But can you blame me? I'm also embarrassed that I can identify them by name. But can you blame me? And I figure if I'm ever going to get the chance to wear large underpants and roll around all sweaty and oily with these guys (and, really, can you blame me?), I'm going to have to come up with my own WWE persona.

As you probably know, the right WWE name is the most important first step. My WWE name reflects the defining components of my unique wrestling personality. It strikes fear and admiration into everyone who hears it yelled into a microphone by a woman wearing plastic heels and a cheap bikini. It says "Jake, you truly are a paragon of masculinity in those high-waisted underpants." Which is why I have chosen the name THE CONJUGATOR. It sounds scary and intimidating but it still shows I'm good with verbs. (If THE CONJUGATOR is already taken, my backup name is THE MODULATOR. Which sounds a little less scary and intimidating, but it shows that I can transpose music up or down a half step as I sight-read it ... a skill that has been proven through the ages to give countless musical prodigies the upper hand in playground scuffles.)

Then there's my entrance music. I know from endless painful nights with the damn WWE blaring throughout our house that all the obvious songs are taken: Orff's O Fortuna, Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra, Brooks & Dunn's Boot-Scootin' Boogie. Which leaves me to choose among the lesser-known canon of bad-ass classics. Like the dominant theme of the third movement of Saint-Saëns' Third Symphony. Which—though it was clearly the inspiration for the overture to The Little Mermaid—still has an intimidating quality to it. If you play it really loud.

So if you'll excuse me, I have some music to blare, some muscles to oil and some large underpants to don. (Don Underpants. I wonder if that name's taken.) And John and Randy: You and your large oily underpants have violated the sanctity of my living room way too often. Now you're going to have to deal with ME. (I hope.)

We're home!

The domestic partner's grandmother's 95th birthday was quite lovely this weekend. There was a private party in a charming little café just outside of Dayton, and friends and family from across the country were there to help celebrate.

And did I mention the food? It was delicious. In fact, it was so delicious that it prompted me to violate almost all the I'm-40-now-so-I-should-develop-responsible-eating-habits eating habits I'd been adhering to for almost two weeks.

And when it came time to bring out her cake, there was a surprise cake right behind it. Her lovely family—who actually scheduled their matriarch's 95th birthday party so it wouldn't conflict with my 40th birthday party the week before even though I've been making googly eyes with their adorable gay grandson for only a year and a half—also bought me a cake and had me share the spotlight for a brief part of the evening. And the cake they bought me was way more delicious than that boiled piece of crap I called a cake at my party. Behold their cake's chocolaty awesomeness:
After we were all packed full of the deliciousness of cake, the grandmother opened her presents. (The domestic partner and I got her DVDs of some old Hollywood musicals. Because that's the kind of stuff we're contractually obligated to give.) Then she started asking people in the room to make little speeches. Which was nice because she was asking the people closest to her who'd known her the longest, and they had some lovely stories about their lives and the role she'd played in them.

Then she started asking a wider circle of people to speak. And they did. And I started getting nervous that she'd work her way down the family org chart and eventually ask me—the big ol' gay and relatively new domestic partner of the big ol' gay grandson—to say something. Which of course she eventually did. I was the last one she asked. I was already feeling very conspicuous having just shared her spotlight at cake time, and now I had to be the closing act to the floor show. But I did have a few warm memories to share and an observation about the love her family clearly has for her. And it all seemed to go over well.

That night, a bunch of us young-uns went to the karaoke bar at our hotel to enjoy the pitchy vocal stylings of ... um ... whoever all those people are who are clearly singing at that bar every night. I am not a fan of karaoke for many reasons: mostly because I firmly believe nobody sounds good on karaoke. Also because on the rare occasions I get up to sing karaoke, I will only perform selections from my personal karaoke repertoire, which is: Elvis Presley's In the Ghetto. (Don't you just love that song? It's absolutely grotesque in its tackiness! But it has a message! So it makes the world a better place! Plus it has backup singers!) But not many karaoke libraries feature my signature song, so there is practically no chance I'll be lending my pitchy vocal stylings to a karaoke bar near you.

And his mama cries ...

The birthday adventures continue

We are in Dayton for the weekend to celebrate the domestic partner's grandmother's 95th birthday. Which totally trumps the epic accomplishment of my 40th birthday last week, but in the spirit of my boundless magnanimity we are choosing not to dwell on that at the moment. Even though—if I may point this out—I successfully turned 40 just eight days ago with no lost teeth, no embarrassing stains and no pushing. And only three boiled cakes.

But since we're on the topic of MY birthday, let me take a moment to report that the domestic partner got me the Young Frankenstein cast album as part of a suite of lavish birthday gifts. And we listened to it last night on our six-hour road trip. And it's really quite good. Especially Doug Besterman's lush, inventive orchestrations. And Sutton Foster's mad yodeling skilz. And what, really, is life without yodeling ingénues?

But I digress. We are here for the domestic partner's grandmother's birthday. And I must focus. Because there will be a dinner tonight. With cake. If I'm lucky. And yodeling. If I'm luckier.

Adult math

So I sold some decade-old, underperforming mutual funds in February 2006 and rolled what I got out of them into an IRA.

And either I made some grand assumptions about IRA tax exemptions or my investment guy didn’t fully explain the tax ramifications of selling mutual funds (or some combination of the two), but I never declared the income on the sale.

In my defense, I honestly don’t think I received the 1099s on the mutual funds a year later when it was time to do my 2006 taxes. And since I wasn’t expecting them, I certainly didn’t look for them. Besides, some 1099s are buried in other statements and are easy to miss. Pet peeve!

Imagine my surprise, then, when a couple months ago I got a letter from the IRS—right as this year’s tax season was heating up, natch—demanding $4,749 in back taxes, interest and penalties on the undeclared income. ACK! How am I supposed to pay for shoes now? And show tunes? And firearms?

Never one to panic, I assumed the whole thing was a mixup and I did not, in fact, need to write a check to the government for almost five thousand dollars. Kind of like the time 20 years ago when I got a summons to appear in court to explain my delinquency from traffic school because someone with a license plate one digit different from mine had been cited for an improper lane change and the violation had not only been entered in some database with my license plate number BUT! it had also been mistakenly entered three times and apparently three improper lane changes makes you some devil-in-a-domestic-partnership threat to society. Improper lane changes: the gateway drug to puppy-kicking, child-eating and Huckabee-licking.

Whew! Where was I? Oh, yes: Deal or no Deal has to be the stupidest show on television. Almost as stupid as John Hagee’s unhinged rants about Hurricane Katrina being his god’s punishment for gay stuff. His god who, despite his celebrated powers of omnipotence, obviously has terrible aim since the hurricane left the gay neighborhoods of New Orleans high and dry while it destroyed the poor and black neighborhoods. But apparently facts aren’t all that necessary when you’re a goat-blower who blames the gays for things in a frantic effort to distract people from your goat-ball breath.

Dang. Once again I’ve wandered off topic. Blame the gays! Oh, wait: I was in the middle of explaining why I was pretty sure I didn’t owe the IRS five thousand dollars. It was because the IRS waited a whole two years to contact me about it, and I’d kind of forgotten it had even happened.

But a full three or four hours of phone calls and emails and more phone calls later, I had a good 150 pages of information about the original purchases and subsequent sales of the mutual funds in question. Then I dumped it all on the desk of a tax accountant, who pored through everything and worked his cost-basis magic and finally this morning came up for air with two conclusions: 1) the mutual funds were really, really sucking when I finally sold them and 2) based on the actual losses I incurred, I really owe the IRS a mere (by comparison) $1,168 in taxes, interest and penalties. Which, according to my dubious math skills, is 66% less, or roughly one week’s worth of shoes.

So let this be a lesson to you all: shitty mutual funds + poorly explained tax ramifications = scofflaw. Also: IRS math = never in your favor. One more: tax accountant = lucrative gig. Stay in school, kids!