A drum machine and a guitar is all I need. And this lamp... and that ashtray...

A typical workweek is ending in la vida scribe and I'm shootin' the shit on the way out the door with the Admin. Assistant for the room (don't call her a secretary). She's cool as shit, always ordering stuff for you out of some catalog or trying to stuff cake down your throat (The Logan Scribe is abstaining from cake because it goes right to The Logan Scribe's thighs).

I feel bad calling her Makeup here; she'd hate that name. I don't know why she wears so much makeup. She's a pretty older lady and doesn't need all that. Anyway, it's her defining feature.

Makeup and I decide we're going out for Thai food sometime and agree that it sucked while it was being renovated, but her new kitchen is bitchin' (Bitchin' Kitchen would be a good name for a rock band). I'm in no hurry to get out the door because it's 4pm and traffic is complete fucking total ass already and it's going to stay that way until 8 something anyway.

The Kennedy blows, as usual. I'm numb to it, which means I only get a little riled up around the tolls. I notice that planes no longer seem to follow the highway on their approach to O'Hare. An hour and fifteen minutes later I get home.

I encounter the technically-legal-but-too-young upstairs housemate (one house, two apts) and some mute stoner on the backporch. He was standing there on his bike in the alley, next to the gate, waiting for her to come down and let him in when I came tearing down the alley in my car and pulled the requisite 3 point star into the garage my turning radius challenged car demands.

"Who the fuck is this douchebag?" I'm thinking. Meanwhile my hair is spiked with hair gel (fresh from the barber), I'm wearing cargo pants, a loud blue hawaiian shirt (tucked in of course), white sneakers that are too white, a work ID around my neck which includes my name and picture, and round blue reflective sunglasses. I am definitely in a position to be judging other people.

I say hi to Brunette (the girl upstairs) and try to make eye contact with her boy but he's too shy and runs upstairs. Were we like that when we were 19? Let me just say "not confidence inspiring". Brunette and I wish each other a happy weekend and laugh about who's going to wake who up later. The girls upstairs are cool.

I'm antsy as all hell. The Roommate is getting earfuls of it, which would be odd if you knew The Roommate. Usually he's the one yattering on constantly. But I've been talking up tonight for days. I got a cold last week and ended up doing jack and shit last weekend, so I'm determined to make up for it.

The Roommate and I decide on going to a particular bar because it has a large neon hamburger on top of it. It seems like a good enough reason to me. It's at Division and Elston and the name of the bar is Life's Too Short to Worry.

Well apparently my shower was too short for The Roomate to find out during his internet searches that it's been condemned for 8 months. We get dropped off by the cab and are left standing across the bridge from Cabrini Green, looking at a posted condemnation notice on the bar we were supposed to be inside right now drinking at (hornswaller). Fuck.

At my insistence we walk in the direction away from Cabrini Green, west on Division. We eventually land some seats at a psuedo-dive. We're by far the youngest people in there, by 20 years at least. We proceed to get drunk. TR plays Legs on the jukebox. Helena, the 57 year old Polish lady running the bar gives us each a shot of Captain Morgan's because TR inadvertently insulted her on her age. I dunno either. Go figure. We tip very well and leave after tying one on.

We stumble out the door around 11:30 pm, happy that the Bears beat the Bills preseason but still smarting at the closed state of our intended bar. We head back because TR is sure he remembers their hours being from 11-2, and we think that now that it's after 11, they'll be open. Amazingly, a construction crew did not in fact show up late on a Friday night and replace the three tiered riverside patio in a matter of hours, so it's still condemned.

TR convinces me that it's safe to walk past Cabrini Green as long as we're on the other side of the street. There are alot of people around, including white girls by themselves (sorry if that offends anyone, but it's a good safetometer), so I go along. It's fine and I had nothing to worry about. Soon we're at Rush street, a major bar district.

Everything is too crowded and fratboyish. We settle on a mostly uncrowded open air seating bar that TR assures me has rum drinks that made him puke the last time he was there. Somehow this is positive. We get daiquiries and head to the open air seating. It's then that we find out the open air seating is open because the bouncers closed it off. So we stand in the cramped bar, totally blocking the staffs' way into the kitchen. My socks at this point are holding up fine (Sock Status Message 3G).

I ask the obviously drunk "bouncer" if we can sit at the one nearest table on the patio, the one right there, barely a speck out of the overhang. "Only if you're staff or a cop" is his honest, slurred reply. No less than 30 seconds later two hot girls pull up chairs to the same table and sit down. I lament that life would be so much easier if only I were a pretty pretty girl ("So many scrunchies, so little time" would be my motto, no doubt etched in pink somewhere). Finally we snag a table as I'm noticing we're the only ones outside of girls who are drinking daiquiries.

Oh well, fuck it. I slug it down and enjoy it anyway. Some older hot ladies sit by us and I start talking to the nearest one. She's TRASHED and so are her friends. Things are looking up in the Scribe's neighboorhood!

Then the boyfriends and the actual father of one of the girls shows up, no shit. Dad is cool, but he's keeping them well in line (as he should). The bf's just seem to be clingy, holding the girls from behind and occasionally tossing scowls their way from behind their cell phones. L-A-M-E. Who were they talking to anyway? Maybe they're just fed up with their totally hammered gf's. I'm hammered too at this point, so I get them to all slap me five for, and I quote, "Happy Weekend! Wooohooo!" I'm nothing if not creative on the spot people. I'm not getting appreciative looks from the bf's.

I'm enjoying myself just fine but I turn to talk to TR for a minute (we're actually having a pretty raw talk about family and fatherhood) and suddenly that crew is just gone. Oh well. TR and I tell each other family stuff we know we're not supposed to.

The next bar is significantly worse. It's one of those square shaped cookie cutters, with a bar and bathrooms in the corner, door to outside on the other. We're only here because it's after 3am and only so many places in Chicago stay open until 5am. A cute Latina stands next to TR and then apparently says something rude to him. The place has been annoying anyway, so we jet.

I wish there was some awesome way to end this tale, but we just cab it back and play Weird Al songs until we're giggling uncontrollably. The last of the house herb is poofen. TR insists that we go outside to play with the lazer. As he's laying on his back pointing it at trees, he tells me a highschool story about Jbad drunkenly hanging out the open passenger door window of Blue Velvet whilst ascending Granada Hill, ostensibly to puke, but as TR accelerates he ends up safely falling out the window and rolling a few times on the hill (I demand Jbad confirm on this one). Meanwhile I pontificate on the genius of I Want a New Duck.

One that quacks all the time, of course. TR humors me but is mostly afraid he's going to miss his noon hair appointment the next day (he does). Of course it's in flippin' Naperville because he won't change hair stylists even though he moved to the city.

Before I go any further, I should explain a little something about TR. He's what you would describe as a "metrosexual". He even has the metrosexual handbook (seriously). He once missed his hair appointment because he spent too long at the tanning bed, true story. Before we left tonight he thrust his favorite hair gel into my hands before my shower, saying something about how his hair is too long for it but mine is the perfect length. It's his way of caring about his friends and I appreciate it in its own rite.

I may format his harddrive and get it all running fast and clean in recompense, but probably not. I'm more likely to go do something else.