Letter

I didn’t account for the weather when I accepted the bar shift. It was going to be a long day anyway. My Sundays are pretty set: I get to the Duck at 10:30am, right when they open, and stay till 1ish. Then I proceed at a leisurely pace to the bookstore for my 2pm-7pm shift.

Halfway into my second Bloody Mary, Joe texts to suggest I stay home to avoid the thunderstorms threatening the area. I assure him I won’t melt but ask if I can come in an hour early and leave at 6pm so I can have a proper dinner break before the 8pm barshift.

I fully intend to bike to the bar but five minutes into the ride my pants are soaked through from the pelting rain. I go home and change and go wait for the bus. First the Archer for half an hour, then, after giving up on that one, I walk to the Orange Line and catch the Ashland one north. By the time it drops me at Division, there are about twenty-five minutes till my shift. I grab an order of Popeye’s chicken tenders and wolf them down al fresco, shielded from the downpour in the bus shelter.

Mike sends a warning text about having the Oscars on. It’s a tradition going back to Kenny’s Sundays. Sure enough, the TV’s on when I walk through the door at five minutes to 8. I stopped watching the show many years ago because it made me angry whenever I wasn’t bored. Hollywood’s annual circle jerk is so far past irrelevant by now that even talking about it is to give it oxygen it doesn’t deserve. But Mike loves it and I would never stand in the way of love, no matter how misplaced.

There is a small group of guys watching. They ask me to put the close-captioning on and I ask Mike if he knows how to do that. The guys move to a booth after a few minutes but the show keeps going. The TV is atop the photobooth and the group running in and out of there between flashes occasionally looks up at the screen. At one point, a plastic surgery disaster slightly resembling Lionel Richie appears and I say, Hello…, as plaintively as I can manage. That gets a couple laughs.

Keefe comes in with a friend. He tells me they’ve just returned from Madison after playing a gig. Another bandmate insisted they eat at the world’s largest Culver’s. He said it was a Wisconsin tradition. Keefe remarks that Culver’s employees are always extra friendly. I say it’s the same at Trader Joe’s and that it always makes me a little uneasy.

As soon as PT Anderson’s worst movie wins best picture I turn the TV off.

A guy I know to be a Michelin-starred chef comes in and asks how many bars in the city are playing Tindersticks right now. That’s what I have on. I tell him I wouldn’t know. I guess he means this as a compliment. Then he shares a piece of gossip about the love life of a singer I know. Why he feels the need to share this is beyond me. Does he know there’s some personal history involved? As far as I know, the guy doesn’t even know my name.

My bartender from the Duck comes in toward the end of the night with her boyfriend and another friend. It’s the first time the shoe’s been on the other foot and she’s clearly amused by the experience.

It’s starting to snow as I walk down Division after locking up. The bus is going across just as I approach the intersection. I wave at it and to my surprise he stops. There is only one other passenger onboard the entire way to Bridgeport. The driver fairly shouts his end of the conversation at the other man the whole way. They talk about where they grew up, the sports they played, the guys they knew who’d made it to the big time.

I can talk all day and night, he says, and I believe him. It’s pretty funny and keeps me awake till it’s time to get off at the Orange Line.

Reviewed a great production of Mickle Maher’s Song About Himself and the Matisse show at the Art Institute.

In case you’re looking for a radio station, try this one.

Digging through the dozens of cardboard boxes in the back closet of the bookstore, I came upon two oversized folders containing portraits of US presidents. I researched what the folder might fetch on the market and it didn’t come to too much. Joe decided to keep one and gave me the other.

The folder was published to commemorate the bicentennial. There are thirty-seven sheets starting with Washington, ending with Nixon. Kind of like baseball cards but the size of a small poster. The backs contain a bunch of the president’s stats. I have no idea what the practical purpose of this set was. Did the publishers imagine patriotic families gathering in suburban living rooms to take turns reciting highlights from their favorite executive’s career? It’s the kind of thing that has “collectible” printed on the cover, ensuring it never will be.

My first and only thought after taking the presidents home is to cut up and deface them. Though nothing I can do to their stillborn visages can match the feeling of dread I have before having at them with the Exacto, glue, and markers. It’s a real rogues’ gallery. Maybe it’s only the perspective from the present-day quagmire but I have trouble imagining that anyone looking at this collection of mugs would feel anything but disgust and revulsion. It’s a real parade of creeps.

I know a bit about a few of them; less about others. A few times I’ve read from the stat sheets on the back but nothing of what I learned there informed what I’ve done to their faces once I flipped them back over.

I rarely respond to political art. It usually has a short shelf life and only resonates, if at all, in its own moment. I’m not thinking of what I’m doing to the presidents as particularly political. It’s more about meditating on an empire as it circles the drain. Coming upon this folder feels a little like that scene in Planet of the Apes where they pass the head of the Statue of Liberty, toppled over and buried on the beach.

I’ve done seven and have thirty to go. I’m thinking of putting them all up in a row in the window cases at the Rainbo Club in September. It is the two-hundred-and-a-halfth anniversary of this thing this year.

Not much to celebrate but I keep making more things to put up on walls anyway.

I wrote about Abel Ferrara’s memoir and rewatching a bunch of his movies.

A couple weeks left to catch my Firecat show.

Bill asked me to drive him to Columbia, Missouri, so I do. We leave early on Friday and return late Saturday. He plays three shows in between. I drive and haul gear. It’s a good division of labor.

The last couple hours of the ride, the nav system has us on everything but dirt roads. I mapped out the route but don’t recall this plunge into the hinterlands. Because I don’t carry a smartphone, Bill is in charge of steering. We both wonder if this could really be the way to a large college town, but it eventually gets us there.

The main drag is clogged with traffic and street-parking is being closed off for some kind of festivities, so we circle around a bit before finding a spot and going into a storefront commandeered into a makeshift artists’ lounge/info center. We get lanyards, pamphlets, and other material, then go off to another storefront a couple blocks away so Bill can drop off his records and CDs at the merch area. The next stop is a bakery Bill knows, for lunch. It’s as mobbed with humans as every other place on the route. More so. This seems to be one of the focal points of the festival. Bill says hello to a few people he knows. He’s played in this town several times before.

There’s an air of anticipation all over that I can’t quite meet at its own level. Maybe it’s because I’m just here to do a job or maybe because I’m allergic to holiday feelings.

Bill’s first show is at the music school’s recital hall. We’re very early. We stash his gear on stage, then are locked out by the piano tuner who is getting the instrument ready for the headliner. She has been delayed by storms in Chicago and being driven by acquaintances of the organizer from Saint Louis. Scheduled to arrive shortly before doors are to open to the public. Bill soundchecks, then we wait.

I sit up front for Bill’s set. Student photographers flit about snapping and clicking. After a short break, the headliner comes on. I last about ten minutes. Fortunately, I’m stage right and she sits facing stage left, so she doesn’t see me leave. I go back to the greenroom, wading through a mini flood in the hallway. A bathroom incident. The next afternoon the same thing happens at the artists’ lounge. Custodians have to be called. Both times it’s right after the headliner has used the facilities. I’m not conspiracy-minded but do spot patterns…

We check into a hotel just off the highway around 11pm. The lobby lounge/restaurant area is overrun by children and the grownups who pay them little mind. We order food off a QR code and are eventually alerted to fetch it at the bar. It’s all kind of dystopian. The momentary blackout due to the severe storm outside only adds to the feeling.

We set up in a large church gymnasium-turned-movie-hall the next morning at 8am. Bill is to play a short set before a documentary about poet Mary Oliver. We stay for the movie. A few minutes in, the tech lady tiptoes over and leaves a brown bag full of ones, collected from staff passing the hat through the arriving audience.

We have a few hours to kill before his last set, in a grand old theater, before a documentary about a doctor’s experience in Gaza. I opt to skip that one and spend some time at a ramshackle bookstore we’d noticed the day before. In the window, a small sign says hours are Saturdays 1-4pm. It’s called Adams Walls of Books and is everything a bookstore should be. I’ve been trying not to buy books but find three I want. The owner only accepts cash, Venmo, or check. I have Venmo but no smartphone, so she holds my books while I run out to find an ATM.

The original plan was to stay a second night at the hotel and leave in the morning but Bill is done by 4pm and asks if I’d be up for driving back right then.

I’m always up for leaving early.

K reads “Bucket of Pig’s Blood” and I read “Dust Jackets” at Tangible Books, March 5th, 2026.