Hardbarned Has A New Home

Just a quick reminder that I've moved over to www.hardbarned.com.
I'm still working on my book, and blogging less because of it, but i finally
have my own site up and running. Come check it out! Thanks.

Grouper & Goat Gristle

I spent a week in Florida scuba diving with my wife in July and was thrilled to see that most people were not from America. Hey, I love America as much as the next guy, but it’s nice to get a break from Americans sometimes. We had some free miles on the airline and a credit card, so we figured we’d go for it. Why not go into a little more debt to give ourselves a vacation for a brief and shining six nights and seven days? We dove from shore and explored the extensive reef systems, drifting along peacefully in the shallows with our floating dive buoy, but we mostly dove from a boat out at sea; the highlight was seeing a purple 500lb Goliath Grouper face to face at the bow of a sunken research vessel at 110ft. That’s the last time we dive somewhere semi-exotic (compared to cold, dark rock quarries Down South, at least) without a decent underwater digital camera.

We met a cab driver from Haiti who gave us multiple rides to and from the marina we hauled our dive gear to and from in order to dive a few wrecks and reefs that required a boat ride. We got along so well with him that he offered to give us a free ride wherever we wanted. We agreed, as long as he’d let us buy him dinner, so we asked him to take us to his favorite authentic Haitian restaurant. Neither of us had ever experienced Haitian food, and we love to try international cuisine whenever possible. The fried chicken and stewed vegetables and salad were tasty, though the goat meat had a lot of fat, bits of spinal column and gristle. Everyone looked at us like we were the most unlikely of patrons, and our host wondered aloud why Haitian restaurants did not advertise; surely there were more non-Haitians who’d like to try the native cuisine. I’d try it again.

Another cabbie—this one a less likeable person and a native Floridian—who drove us from the marina to our hotel, talked about how much he loved to watch television and lay around at the pool when he was on vacation. He couldn’t understand why we hadn’t used the pool when we were staying a block from the beach, and he was flabbergasted at our revelation that we had not turned on our television once (though we did watch Man Vs. Food and Alien the night before we headed home). This guy talked about how his wife was always trying to go to the beach and read books when he just wanted to watch TV and sit by the pool. Reading books on the beach with cold beverages was what took up most of our above water time, as it turned out. This cabbie said, “I’m glad I’m not married to YOU two!” So were we.

We discovered an excellent Greek restaurant close to our motel and returned for their simple yet exquisite hummus. My wife considers herself a “hummus snob” since she makes it for us at home so often, and she was very impressed with the recipe at this place. I made the stupid mistake of asking if they had falafel, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. Our friendly waiter brought me a couple of Mythos Greek lagers, which I enjoyed and found refreshing in the oppressive July heat.

Walking along the beach late one afternoon, we passed a drunken Russian fisherman named Andres who introduced himself and shared with us his whiskey from a bicycle squeeze bottle. We made small talk, and I asked what he thought of the new Russian president Medvedev. In his thick Russian accent he proclaimed dismissively,

“IS PUPPET!”

At our parting, I shouted “Nostrovia!”

Andres gasped at me and said, “How you know this?”

“The Deer Hunter,” I said.

“Ah!” He nodded and smiled, miming a toast and taking another swig as we walked on.

Our motel room featured a full kitchen, and we walked to the grocery to avoid eating out for every meal. One day an older woman stopped us as we walked home, sweating in the heat with arms full of groceries, and insisted that we catch the free shuttle bus with her. Eager to help, she suggested we try a local bar known as the Bamboo Beach. We met Andres on the way there.

Bamboo Beach was a little Tiki Hut bar and restaurant right on the beach, the perfect spot for enjoying dinner and drinks at dusk, watching the ocean, and watching the people, as it turned out. We liked it so much that we ate dinner there three nights in a row. The first night, we had fried Grouper with salads and French fries and were witness to the dramatic reunion of a large group of scantily clad lesbians, many of which were former lovers, all of which were loudly discussing the pros and cons of their past relationships with each other and reasons for their emotional breakups at volume levels well over the jukebox, which made our eavesdropping quite involuntary if not somewhat entertaining. At a table near us sat two hulking bald men with Playboy bunny, artificially enhanced girlfriends half their age. It was something like a bad reality television show, but without commercials.

The next night, we sat at the same table with excellent views of the ocean and the bar, and this time, instead of lesbians, seated in front of us at the bar, their backs to us, was a large group of obese southerners. We were amazed again as one of the huge women sat on her husband’s busy hand, the two giants precariously spilling over their adjacent bar stools like the sloppy lounge lizards in Hunter Thompson’s take on Las Vegas, both engaged heavily in drunken conversation with patrons on the other side of the bar. The outsized man was vigorously massaging his wife’s nether regions through her pink shorts from behind with one hand, calmly hoisting a beer with his other as he appeared to be fully engaged with the ongoing bar chatter on the other side of the bar, apparently oblivious to the fact that we and everyone else seated at tables on his side of the bar were bearing witness to his quite public display of something more than affection for his wife’s crotch. She too belied no upper body language to reveal what was going on below the bar. Above board she was drinking and chatting with the rest of the crew.

The third night was truly special. We arrived at Bamboo Beach to a constant stream of Michael Jackson’s music, which neither of us minded much—we like many of his songs. It was certainly better than top forty or country, and we figured it was appropriate due to the recent and premature demise of the king of pop. We assumed our customary spots at our table, sipped our drinks and perused the menu, relaxed. This time in the Lesbian Drama/Crotch Grabber bar stools sat a group of east coast meatballs in their thirties with sleeveless shirts and flat tops accompanied by a tough guy in his fifties with his wife. They started arguing with the bartender in their toughguy meatball east coast accents. Another bartender got into the argument, and then various male servers headed over.

Soon the meatballs were chest bumping and f-bombing the entire male staff of the restaurant in what looked like a full-on brawl ready to happen. I kept hoping a Roadhouse-era Patrick Swayze character might appear with some jump kicks and uppercuts, but no such luck. The very small and stylish manager arrived with big hair, gold bracelets, a hockey jersey, and some enormous guys with backwards golf hats and gray goatees. The glaring and the staring and the chest bumping and the threatening and the shouting got so close to our table that I had to move my chair in order to get out of the way of the rapidly expanding, surging ball of testosterone. Finally the meatballs gave up and were banished. Then we learned the genesis of the argument from our server.

The east coast bigmouths had placed thirty dollars into the digital jukebox, loading it with several hours of Michael Jackson songs and nothing else. They had proceeded to get wasted on a steady stream of draft beers. Before we had arrived, many people had complained about the lack of musical variety and had actually left the restaurant, so the management had voided the musical selections on the hijacked jukebox and returned the stereo to a mix of musical styles. This had enraged the meatballs and started the conflict. The drunken men had continually screamed about the “fuckin’ free-loaders” (patrons like us) who had been—from their perspectives—benefiting from the meatball contingent’s investment in the night’s soundtrack without being charged for it.

“He’s the greatest singuh whose evuh lived! Evuh!”

The older meatball leader continually pronounced aloud to nobody in particular.

Epic Heavy Metal Tennis Challenge

Many people discount tennis and think it’s for fruity rich guys in short pants who have a court in their backyards and want to hit around for a while before teatime. Well I’m here to tell you that regular guys in cargo shorts with tattoos and black t-shirts who can barely afford a one-bedroom apartment might love the game too. My dad taught me tennis when I was but a wee lad, barely able to hold the racquet and run around without tripping over my own two feet. I played in the competitive city leagues when I was growing up, and I was the only sophomore to make the tennis team at my high school, and that was a big deal then. I played the game and loved it, and wasn’t really pressured to do it by dad, even though he got me started. I went to tennis camp a few times and had some lessons too.

The problem was heavy metal. How could heavy metal be a problem, you might ask? It’s such a universal source of unrelenting pleasure, you might think? Well I had a scheduling problem. I was a metal head, a skate boarder, and a tennis player, as it turned out. I didn’t mind that I was the only tennis player with a dumb haircut, baggy skater clothes, and a hat that had Soundgarden and Metallica patches on it. I was good enough. I didn’t want to wear those goofy little white short shorts or visors or matching polo shirts or cardigans or any of that crap. For me there would be no K Swiss. If I could compete in my old Airwalks and argyle socks, I would.

The problem was scheduling. My life had recently changed; I was in a band. My buddies and I had started playing heavy metal (or our closest approximation of it) after school in one guy’s spare bedroom, before his mom came home from work. I played bass and wrote lyrics for songs like “Madness Throne,” (yes, we listened to Alice In Chains’ “Angry Chair”—I guess it rubbed off). Our singer was so bad that we couldn’t even stand to be in the same room with him, so we gave him a wireless microphone. He sat in the next bedroom and screamed and growled from behind two closed doors. I had my first chance to rock; I had had a taste, and something stuck. I had a decision to make, as tennis practice was every day after school until five pm, precisely the only time available for my band, known as Hard To Figure, to practice. Rock beat tennis, and I threw away my hopes and dreams of tennis success for an endless series of shitty bands nobody has ever heard of.

It was worth it, but the longer version of the rock story is for my next book. When I say next, I mean second. Second book, you say? You missed the first book? Well it’s not out yet. It’s coming soon. Really. That’s why I’m so behind on blogging. It’s called HARDBARNED. How did you guess? It will be out soon, I promise! Tell all your friends! I’m sure that both of you who still read this blog will love it. But this post was supposed to be about tennis.

Anyway, I quit the high school tennis team and rocked out. Fast-forward sixteen years or so, and we arrive at my decision to break back into the world of competitive tennis! Ha!

However, indulge me for one more drop back into the past to briefly mention my first semester of college: I always thought I’d walk on to my college tennis team, despite spending years away from serious play. I still loved the game and still thought of myself as a pretty good player. Then I showed up to watch one of my University team’s practices and realized immediately that I was crap, and that I’d never make the team. I still had a few freshman phys-ed requirements to take care of, so I took intermediate and advanced tennis classes, and scuba diving.

Off and on, from finishing undergrad in 2000 until today, I had occasionally sought out some sort of competitive tennis in my area. Accustomed to my city leagues back in my hometown, I assumed that a town with such a phenomenal collegiate team would naturally have a great city tennis program as well. Well, maybe it does, but you might have to be over sixty years old and into mixed doubles.

All I wanted was to be involved in regular, somewhat evenly matched, somewhat competitive singles matches with guys around my same level of play, so that I wouldn’t be slammed into oblivion by world class players like the guys on the local college team, but I wouldn’t be chasing homerun moonballs hit over the fence by rookies either. I didn’t expect to win tournaments or anything remotely like it. I just wanted to get some regularly strenuous exercise, work on improving my game, and have a good time.

The first thing I did was call the tennis coach at school who also had presided over the two tennis courses I had taken. He suggested that I call a local lady who was supposedly organizing local tennis. I called this lady and was told that nobody really had anything organized at all, but that I was welcome to pay this woman forty dollars for the privilege of showing up on Saturday mornings with a wide assortment of local tennis enthusiasts, men and women ranging from children to senior citizens who would pair off for random singles and doubles play that couldn’t be more unpredictable. What was my forty dollars for, again? This was all my town had to offer its tennis-playing citizens?

I stopped searching for my local tennis nirvana after this, and I probably picked up a racquet once or twice a year when visiting my dad or hitting with a friend on rare occasions. A few years had gone by when suddenly I spotted a bumper sticker advertising a local tennis organization. Surprised and intrigued, I located said group online and couldn’t seem to load the website. What came up was a jumbled mess of HTML and lines of text that overlapped, rendering much of it unreadable. I switched to another browser in the hopes of better luck but had none. Sifting through the tangled layers of code and information, I located an email address for a secretary of the group who was listed as a contact for more information. I promptly sent an email inquiring about local men’s singles leagues and got no reply whatsoever. Perhaps the secretary was busy hiring a web designer. Weeks later I went to the site in search of another contact and found one listed for “men’s singles play.” Perfect. How could I have missed this guy in the first place? Surely he would know how I could get in on some well-organized tennis. I emailed him a similar inquiry and again received no reply whatsoever. Again, weeks went by, and I was irritated. I went back to the site again and this time found the email listing for the President of the association. I emailed her and again requested information.

She got back to me pronto and apologized for the “not really working” men’s singles contact and the membership contact/secretary who she described as “a bit distracted.” She too encouraged me spiritedly to sign up for the old “whoever shows up plays” on Saturdays, forty dollar group. I declined. She allowed me to convince her that I was good enough for her to sign me up for a list of players who were organizing a men’s league. Things worked out pretty well. I played two months of tennis on a team with ten guys and really enjoyed it, even though I had to play doubles, a different game entirely.

At least now I had some local tennis buddies and some recent competitive experience under my belt. The difference was that I didn’t want to be on a team of ten guys, and I didn’t really want to play doubles. I still wanted to be able to organize a match a week with just one other guy instead of trying to get a schedule together that twenty people had to agree on every time we played.

I decided that I had to put together my own group of guys, and if I could be sanctioned by the USTA as well, then great. Why not? I emailed the USTA directly about how to officially set up my league and was ignored. I emailed the southern division of the USTA as well, and they ignored me too. Both divisions have ignored me, despite my recent $40 membership fee and $20 league fee. I emailed the president of the local tennis group again. This time, she too ignored me. A month later I emailed her again. She still didn’t respond. What is with these people, I thought?

After emailing around to several guys who were interested in the new men’s singles league, I heard of someone I should talk to—an older lady who seemed a bit scattered but friendly and was supposedly in charge of setting up leagues locally. She too tried to convince me to try the random Saturday get together group. She also told me that the local tennis organization had “voted” to not participate in flexible men’s singles leagues. When I declined to sign up for the random Saturday $40 group and delicately made it clear that I didn’t care if the local tennis group had decided to paint themselves like the Blue Man Group and host group showers—I was starting a men’s singles flex league—she revealed that she was only in charge of the senior citizen and mixed doubles groups.

She talked over me enough that I could barely get my point across, but I was patient and polite, and I did. She said I had to talk to yet another lady who was the league coordinator for the entire region. She offered to contact this lady for me, if only I would email her. I promised to email her immediately and did so. She didn’t respond for several days. Then I got a call from her, asking if I would please get in contact with her. I told her that I had already sent her an email immediately following our conversation. It turns out she had given me the wrong email address. I sent the email again. She then emailed the regional league coordinator and copied me on the email, requesting more information on my behalf. She also copied the president of the local tennis group who contacted me right away, apologizing for ignoring my past two emails for the past two months, saying that she sometimes “let people slip through the cracks.” I wondered who elected her president. Had the men’s singles coordinator, the secretary and the web designer voted for her?

The mysterious lady that was ultimately contacted—the one who supposedly holds the Golden Tennis Balls of Authority to officially sanction our league—has neither responded to the email sent to her from the previous lady, nor to the follow-up email that I sent to her directly.

Some details about other failed contacts and communication efforts aside, after trying to contact everyone I could possibly think of to officially sanction our league, people at the USTA, the USTA Southern, the local tennis association, various state and local league coordinators, online tennis organizers, and elsewhere, I got nowhere. I am moving on, setting up my own league, with the help of a tennis buddy I met on the team I played with recently, and we don’t need the USTA or anybody else to tell us how to do things. Punk rock tennis, heavy metal tennis, DIY tennis, whatever you want to call it. It’s five bucks each, and we set it up however the hell we want.

Tip A Canoe Full Of Brew

Last weekend I enthusiastically plunged into my one predictable annual tradition: the camping trip with my high school buddies. Though we are now spread across many hundreds of miles, we’ve been at this for approximately twelve years, and we always plan for the better part of four days and three nights in the wilderness, or at least the edge of it. There are usually five of us, give or take one or two who show up late and/or leave early or flake out entirely, and we head to the same spot almost every year. We hike about a mile into the woods and set up camp between the river and the trail. Sometimes other people camp in the area, but they usually stay close to the parking lot with their screaming kids and barking dogs and don’t bother hiking in far at all to spend the night. We prefer to get away from people, though there are usually several groups of hikers who walk by our site from time to time, and we always wave.

The camp trip is a time for us to catch up on what everyone has been up to, to sit around and socialize, to do a short hike or two, to swim and sometimes fish in the river, to cook over an open fire and on our various camp stoves, and to drink plenty of cold beer.

The cold beer is usually the biggest challenge of the entire annual tradition, which I suppose has its roots in our teenage excursions into the woods of our hometown for bonfires and underage drinking. These trips no longer involve broken teeth on non-twist-off bottles of Imports or smashed bottles against tree trunks or high speed drunken chases through darkened woods in competition for the last beer. Now in our early thirties, we still keep an eye out for the authorities, but we go somewhere relatively safe and quiet, and now we’re the ones meticulously picking up our trash and the trash that others leave behind.

The challenge the beer presents is of course one of refrigeration and transport: how does one effectively move large quantities of ice-cold beer to a campsite approximately a mile into the woods? Traditionally, we have carried multiple coolers packed with beer and ice and foodstuffs into the woods, a process bordering on masochism. I have carried one cooler filled with two cases of beer and ice in both hands across my chest down the trail more times than I’d like to admit. I’ve also shared the burden of these impossible coolers with a buddy plenty of times as well. The burning torture inflicted on the arms and shoulders can reduce a grown man to a quaking mess on the verge of tears, but ah, the glory of a cold beer in the woods is seldom replicated.

Two years ago I had had enough. I came across an invention that seemed to be the perfect solution: an all-terrain dolly. The metal dolly was painted bright yellow and featured rubber handgrips and oversized, knobby mud tires. This had to be the answer! As I prepared to hike into the camp spot last year, I strapped the cooler onto the bottom of the dolly with bungee cords and attached the rest of my gear: tent, sleeping bag and mat, folding chairs, etc, to the top of the dolly above the cooler. Despite the all-terrain moniker, the dolly wobbled and crashed through the woods on roots and rocks and was generally an all-terrain pain in the ass. Things kept popping loose from the straps as the entire load was jostled from one side to the other while the narrow dolly clanged its clumsy way along the path. Clearly this was not the answer.

I am somewhat ashamed at my own slow intellect when I realize that it took all of us about a dozen years to realize what may have been obvious to anyone reading this post: we were camping between a trail and a river. Why not float the coolers and gear down in a canoe? I cannot explain why it never occurred to us until last year’s all-terrain dolly debacle, but this year was different, better, and set a precedent, despite multiple capsizings.

This year one of my pals brought his canoe, and everything changed. We converged on the river with three full coolers; one contained a five-gallon soda keg of homebrewed India Pale Ale, a luscious blend of hops and malt that was a real luxury to enjoy in the woods. This keg was on ice and connected to a large pressurized bottle of Co2 for carbonation. The other two coolers contained ice, beer, and food. We also stacked the canoe with an assortment of bags—some designed to be waterproof, others not so much—and we headed on our way with paddles and lifejackets on the bottom of the boat, just in case.

I weighed a bit less than my buddy and thus sat up front as we began our short journey downriver. The boat was sitting very low in the river, and we were a bit concerned about taking on water, but not enough to slow us down, as we cut a quick path through the relatively calm waters, until we hit the rapids, yelled out ideas rapid-fire about which way to turn or paddle, were swept sideways against a huge boulder in the middle of the river, and promptly dumped over with the contents of the canoe.

Since the river was so shallow, we were able to get our footing and grab the boat before everything fell out, though we took on enough water that getting it out was going to be impossible with all the weight of the luggage. We laughed and just made it to the shoreline of our usual campsite without sinking, where we unloaded everything and tapped the keg.

We spent the next three days and nights in the usual ways, lounging, visiting, hiking, swimming, drinking, cooking, sleeping, etc, but the food was much better this time, as we had brought our own special concoctions of steak fajitas, curry chicken, spicy cashew chicken, beef with broccoli, homemade breakfast sausages, bacon and hard boiled eggs, as well as the regular ramen noodles, granola bars, beef jerky, trail-mix, coffee, tea, and Gatorade. We took the canoe out for fun a couple more times and tipped over a couple more times too, as we challenged an increasingly rough set of rapids, but we never felt truly in danger and made it back, sometimes having to trudge against the current through the rapids, knocking our shins against the rocks and dragging the boat behind us. Some of us caught a few fish, but nothing worth dining on.

On a hike back out of the woods on the morning of our fourth day, I dropped a heavy load of gear on a wooden bridge and declared my intention to take a break. My friend accompanying me turned to look at me and was promptly stung in the leg by an angry hornet. I looked down simultaneously and noticed one of my folding camp chairs, teetering on the edge of the bridge, then flopping over the side. My friend started to run from the bridge and pointed out that we had chosen the worst stopping place possible: immediately over a hornet’s nest. They were now swarming around the hive, and my chair was right underneath them. I snuck in, grabbed the chair, and ran in the opposite direction, making it out of the woods without a sting. What a great trip. Can’t wait for next year.

Metal In The Beef Hall Of Legend

A couple weeks ago my wife and I went to Chicago to visit a rockstar pal of mine named Dallas. Well, he’s a rockstar in some circles, but he’s rapidly expanding those circles, and if you like metal, you should listen to his awesome MUSIC. Anyway, he’s one of my best pals, and he’d suggested several times that we come visit, so we took him up on it. I’d been a few times before, but it was a first for the Mrs, and we were really looking forward to it. Turns out we had a great time, even though we never were able to find Chicago style pizza for my wife. Everywhere we went, people were selling NYC style pie. We saw the German submarine that was captured during WWII, a real highlight of the trip at the Museum of Science & Industry. We three had read Robert Kurson’s great book SHADOWDIVERS, about the scuba divers who found an unidentified German sub in waters off New Jersey in the early nineties. One of the divers had made repeated trips to Chicago to tour the sub in the museum in order to make mental notes for his multiple dives on the unidentified sub, as fellow divers and friends of his were literally dying while trying to identify the wreck in treacherous waters, 230ft deep. Being recreational divers and big fans of the book, we were in awe of the enormous U-Boat and enjoyed a spirited monologue from one retired submariner who shared his jolly and expletive-ridden story with us. We were bummed that we didn’t make the interior tour, but according to this lively submarine veteran, the tour guides just read from a script and “don’t know their asses from holes in the side of the sub.” We went to the Chicago History Museum next, and their exhibits about crime in the 20s and race relations in the 60s were powerful.

We went up to the top of the John Hancock building and checked out the view for the admission price of an $8 Guinness for Dallas and myself and a $14 martini for the Mrs. This beats paying $20 each for the “observation deck” that is actually below the bar level, where you don’t even get a drink!

We checked out the Billy Goat Tavern underground and Dallas pissed off a wise guy sitting in a section clearly marked “Wise Guys.” We spent too much money at The Goose Island brewery but enjoyed the delicious varieties of IPA and British Bitter. I heard a guy next to me in a golf outfit tell his friend that IPA meant that the beer was “Indiana Pale Ale,” and that it was shipped into Chicago from Indiana. I didn’t say anything. We made a couple stops for breakfast at the quirky & tasty Earwax Café, where I had possibly the best green tea I’ve ever tasted, and my wife had an exceptional fruit smoothie. We visited the Flat Iron bar in Wicker Park and had some sort of lemon-lime & vodka concoction while wandering around and checking out all the great local artwork.

We entered Anish Kapoor’s unique Cloud Gate sculpture downtown, which is locally referred to as “The Bean,” due to its obvious bean shape. It’s composed of 110 tons of polished steel, and walking inside is like entering a warped clown-house of mirrors.

The Puerto Rican festival was going on all week in the Humboldt Park area where we were staying, and we enjoyed listening to the music from our friend’s roof one night as we watched the sunset over the city skyline and sipped a few tasty brews. We walked all over the place and rode several buses and the El. It was nice to use just public transportation and our feet, getting away from the cars, but the sheer amount of planning and logistic considerations for inner-city travel sometimes seemed overwhelming to a guy who enjoys the ease of getting around in his little town. We learned that on the last night we were in town, about a block from where we were staying, someone was stabbed at the festival, right around the time we were walking between bars. This added to our appreciation of our slow, quiet little city. Chicago is rad to visit, but I like a tree-to-people ratio that leans heavily in favor of the trees.

Dallas also took us to his place of employment, a unique and fantastic burger joint that I was glad to welcome into my own mental catalog of perfected fleshy deliciousness, the Beef Hall of Legend. Until this trip, only two meals held esteemed status in the Hall. These were the MEATCAKE that my buddy Greg made for me as a surprise 30th birthday gift, and the roast that my friend Francois cooked when he was visiting last May. Both meals were unparalleled triumphs of their respective genres, and the burger I had at KUMA’S CORNER in Chicago was also a pillar of magnificence in a wide field of burger goodness. Click on that link above and read through their website. It’s fucking awesome. They name their truly inimitable variety of burgers after metal bands. Their beer selection would make a dedicated homebrewer weep tears of joy. Their beer menu says “Death to Miller and Budweiser . . . they are over-produced and inferior products that prevent passionate craftsmen from sharing their gifts with us.” Beautiful. If only people like me could afford to pay for such gifts on a regular basis. They play a non-stop barrage of loud metal—no, you can’t make a request—in their tiny, dark restaurant that seats about thirty people. They have epic fantasy artwork custom-painted and framed across all of the walls. There is an enormous flatscreen television running constantly above the bar—no, they won’t turn on the game—with obscure movies about naked women and samurai. Lots of boobs and decapitations. Because of or in spite of this intense ambiance, this is THE place to go, and the wait can be up to three hours. The first time we went, we couldn’t even get in, and we were with my buddy who works there. They’ve only been open four years, but the line still goes around the block regularly. Chicago readers of a local paper voted them the best burgers in town, and business seems to have reacted accordingly. It is common, I am told, to see suburban families, Grandma and the grandkids, suits on a lunch break, street urchins, and metal dudes with facial tattoos all at one lunch sitting. Cool as hell.

When we finally got in for a burger one night around 11:30, my “Melvins” burger was served up on an exquisitely toasted pretzel roll and topped with fresh basil, prosciutto, mozzarella, tomato, and onion. I had a side of Kuma’s homemade potato chips. The beef was browned slightly but red inside, more rare than I’d usually request, but it was the best burger I’ve ever had, period. I didn’t even think about the history of the Chicago stockyards or The Jungle or the environmental impact of cattle farming as I pondered the source of such a seemingly flawless hamburger. Chased with a local IPA with luxuriously floral hops and a bitter aftertaste, I can’t remember a more blissful burger experience, despite the dirty drunk who sat next to my wife and kept harassing us all to drink more. Thanks for a great trip, D-Ray.

Rise Of The Machines

After what appears to be a resolution in the continuing saga of breakdowns, diagnoses, estimates, repairs, more breakdowns, sales, and replacements relating to three of our vehicles, now another set of machines is angrily rebelling.

The electric dryer broke down about six months ago. I am no appliance repairman. My father in law helped me determine the cause, and I replaced the heating element, or, actually, I watched him do it. Things went well for, well, six months. Last week it stopped heating up. Surely that $60 heating element didn’t need to be replaced already? After another diagnosis by my wife’s dad, we determined that a heat sensor needed to be replaced. As it turns out, this particular heat sensor had been discontinued and isn’t even available at America’s Largest Parts Superstore Online, much less at Lowe’s, Home Depot, Sears, or our preferred venue, the little local guy’s parts place. However, I did easily find a seemingly compatible replacement part for $16 online and replaced it myself.

Things worked fine for three days, or at least long enough to clear our apartment of wet laundry. Our home had started to look like an Indian brothel with our variously patterned, multi-colored sheets hanging from drying racks and door frames and draped over furniture with pants, shirts and assorted male and female underwear all over the place.

Then the dryer stopped heating again, and the washer started leaking water all over the floor underneath itself and the dryer, making repair attempts for a poorly equipped repairman like myself even more precarious. I think I have some rubber boots from a construction stint in Alaska.

Fed up, I spent a couple hours online last night researching washers and dryers, reading Consumer Reports and sifting through stacks of customer reviews and ratings. I really wanted energy efficient machines with Energy Star ratings, if I was going to do this, but every time I started to zero in on a washer that was rated highly by both Consumer Reports and all the customers who had reviewed it, I would discover that the dryer designed to go with it was not Energy Star compliant. This happened twice after extensive research.

I thought it was particularly hilarious and frustrating that the washing machine that was rated highest on Consumer Reports was rated an average of 2 out of 5 stars by the fifty or so customers who had reviewed it! The suggestions for “Best Uses” included “Boat Anchor” and “Modern Art.”

“DO NOT BUY THIS PIECE OF CRAP” one review said.

“USELESS AND DANGEROUS” read another.

“THIS WASHER WILL RANDOMLY JUMP AROUND THE ROOM AND BANG THE WALL AND THE DRYER. IT SOUNDS LIKE THE ROOF IS COMING DOWN. BRAND NEW CLOTHES WILL COME OUT WITH HOLES RIPPED IN THEM.”

“ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OUR CLOTHES DON’T LOOK WORN BECAUSE WE HAVE TO REPLACE THEM OFTEN.”

“WORST WASHING MACHINE POSSIBLE.”

“AVOID IT EVEN IF YOU CAN GET IT FOR FREE.”

“LITTLE DEMON.”

All these comments were on the first dryer that comes up on the recommendations page.

My wife suggested washing clothes in the bathtub and getting one of those handheld wash/scrub racks you see hanging from the wall at Cracker Barrel—the ones that Old Timey bands use to keep the rhythm with the banjo and the jug. You don’t get much more energy efficient than one of those babies. You don’t even plug it in.

I decided to delay my purchase and think about this for a while. I don’t mind the hanging underwear so much, but I really don’t like the idea of scrubbing clothes on my knees in the bathtub. I don’t want to spend a bunch of money I don’t have on fancy machines, but I don’t want to buy another set of old clunkers and go through this whole mess again. Plus, I really do like the idea of having more energy-efficient machines. Looks like I could save at least $50 a year on electric bills. Wow. Can’t we do better than that? Help me, T. Boone Pickens, you’re my only hope. Shouldn’t we have solar or wind powered appliances? Why can’t our apartment complex install panels and turbines on the roof? Of course, when I asked the girl at the apartment complex office about recycling, she looked at me like I was speaking in Russian and said, “No one’s ever mentioned that before.”

As Terminator 4 releases this week, and I find myself trapped—sinking in what appears to be a perpetual vortex of machines conspiring to take over my life—I feel a sort of kinship with John Connor. I know my cars and household appliances aren’t trying to murder me or assassinate my mom or wipe humanity from the face of the earth, but how can I be so sure?

How much do we really rely on these machines in our lives, and how scary is that?

Wrath of the Car Gods

Whatever it is that I have done to anger thee, oh Gods of Transportation, I'd like to repent. I give up, oh you Omnipotent and Omnipresent Lords of the Combustion Engine. You Ultimate Entities in Charge of Vehicular Regularity and Reliability. You Bastards of Inconvenience and Collectors of Commuters' Complaints. I know not how I have offended thee, but I get the motherfucking picture. You don't like me. Well I don't like you either, assholes.

Here is the sequence of events, which began merely four months ago. My wife's Saturn decided not to start unless it was in the mood. Fairly often it wasn't in the mood when my wife was, like when she was leaving work or a parking lot somewhere sketchy after dark. My wife didn't like this. My local mechanic repeatedly asked, "when are you going to get rid of this thing?" My wife was understandably stressed out. We sold the Saturn; my wife drove my Toyota, and I went without a car for a while. Then my grandfather unexpectedly and generously donated his Lincoln to the family cause, and this car had very few miles on it for being twelve years old. It was comfortable and clean and seemed to be a real windfall for us. My wife liked it and was happy to have the replacement.

Then the transmission started malfunctioning on my Toyota. Yes, my Toyota. Aren't they supposed to be bullet proof and indestructible paragons of automobile artistry? I guess not. Did you Great Gods of Cars not create the Toyota in your own image, in one of your spectacular birthing chambers for Iconic Vehicular Perfection? I got several estimates and decided to drive the Toyota 180 miles away to save nearly a thousand dollars with a trusted family mechanic whose estimate for transmission replacement undercut the competition massively. My kind step father loaned me his truck.

When I tried to drive the truck home, I noticed it was pulling to the right, viciously. I checked the tire pressure and evened all tires out, and nothing changed. I went to the garage and discovered that the truck needed almost $1200 worth of work to fix the brake pads, rotors, shocks, struts, alignment, tire rotation and balance, etc, before it would be in shape to drive the 180 miles back to my house. We had to fix it.

We got the truck home; the Toyota remained in the shop. Then the Lincoln took a nose dive, losing power to one of its eight cylinders. Couldn't it just run on seven, you might ask? Well yes, but it wouldn't pass emissions standards where we live. It runs fine now but shivers a bit, perpetually flashing the check engine light. It needs an incredible amount of labor to merely diagnose the problem. Couldn't your Great Bearded Divinities of Driving cut me a break and make the Lincoln all better without twenty one hours of labor to remove the entire engine in order to access the cylinder in question and discover the true reason for the problem? Is it really that funny to watch us mere mortals struggle with machines beyond our comprehension?

So we decide to sell the Lincoln while driving the loaner truck and awaiting the discounted though still costly repair job on the Toyota. My wife's parents step in unexpectedly and buy a fantastic used Nissan for us, and we are blown away by their generosity and timeliness. My worries are lessoned considerably knowing that my wife is behind the wheel of a comfortable and reliable vehicle. I'm not even bothered that the repairs on the Toyota have now taken over a month. I continue to drive my step dad's truck.

The Lincoln still up for sale, we hear from our mechanic, three hours away, that the Toyota is "performing beautifully" with its new transmission and that it is ready for pickup. My mom and step dad go to pick up the beautifully performing machine, and my mom phones me triumphantly from her Volvo on the way home from the mechanic's garage to tell me that my step dad is driving my Toyota back to the house, and that the mechanic had been singing the praises of my car, commenting on how well it was running with the new/used transmission he had just installed. She and my step dad were almost home.

Good to know. I returned to the stove top to finish cooking a spicy vegetable curry dish and drink a cold beer. Thirty minutes later, my step dad calls, saying "I don't know what you've done to anger the Gods of Transportation, but I think you've rubbed one Car Genie the wrong way." So he continues, telling me the story of how he drove my Toyota half the way to his house from the mechanic's garage with a real sense of relief, both for himself, I'm sure, as he would finally get his truck back, and for me because he's a great guy and has a lot of empathy for the fact that I'm the apparent recipient of the combined wrath of the Coalition of Angry Automobile Allahs. Halfway home, he hears a catastrophic-sounding BOOM! from under the hood, followed by awkward shifting by the transmission, another BOOM! and squeals from the confused tires, unsure whether to follow the path of the car itself or obey the counterintuitive instructions from the newly installed transmission that apparently has now abandoned my car on this evening, their first date. My step dad was able to limp home with the seemingly mortally wounded car to tell the tale, and life goes on. The Toyota is returning to the shop, one way or another. The bicycle on my porch is looking good.

As far as problems go, mine are petty and insignificant, as I am an extremely fortunate man to have what I have, but you lousy Gods of Vehicular Transportation, wherever you are, you can blow it out your goddamn radiator hose.