Short ramble ramble

For the past few months I've been wanting to make a mix of songs that contain indeterminate pronouns in their title. Like "I Want It That Way," "I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)," "You Will When You Believe," etc etc. I need help.
I am allergic to cats.
Thoughts on the city of Chicago: I'm having some trouble formulating. I think this is ultimately where it's going: I really like Chicago, but I don't think I could live here again. This all has to do, I'm fairly certain, with dirt, or a lack thereof.
I'm sitting right now in a friend's house, on the 23rd floor of a building right on the lake. The view is amazing, extending forever to the East, North and West. Chicago's still pretty.
But there are few bodegas here, which is not just problematic when you want some water or gum or sliced fruit. It's also problematic because it suggests just how strangely ascetic the affluent neighborhoods in Chicago are. Whole swathes of this city have never been anything but affluent (or that's what it feels like.) They never gentrified, the gentry was always here. All the stores are so cute and clean and pleasant and right out of a box, off the shelf. Like some middle-aged, soccer mom from Minnesota (or Chicago) designed a city.
But did a good job, because like I said, it's beautiful here. And there are trees. And if you walk down the street at night, you come across squares of sidewalk that have been torn up for construction and filled with sand. And in them all you can see are tree roots. No trash. You could take off your shoes and play in it like it's a sandbox if you liked.

Pauses in vehicular motion- II

Steve is looking for a new apartment so we went to see a place yesterday at noon. It was on the outskirts of Pittsburgh (so far as I can tell) and in a quiet complex full of older, two-story brick apartment buildings that look like they should have courtyards, but don’t. Real Estate Agent Dean was showing Steve the apartment for the second time—they’d been by to see it the day before, but the door had been chained from the inside. They hollered and knocked and called but no one answered, even though someone must have been home to have set the chain.
Dean is some kind of character. He was wearing matching suspenders and tie, patterned in a dark blue paisley so unbelievably ugly that the first thing I said to him was how much I liked them. He looks like he’s in his late 40s, early 50s, has a son who is 37, is shaped like a slim egg, and has fine hair and a goatee exactly the color of steel wool. He likes to talk.
He unlocked the door, but it was still chained. Steve joked, sort of, that the tenant was probably dead. Dean said, “Maybe they’re just on heavy ‘ludes. You’d smell a body,” and then proceeded to tell us the following story:
When he was in high school he used to help gather corpses for a friend’s dad who was an undertaker. One time a bunch of guys took a hearse, with a body in it, to the Eat N’ Park, a fast food drive-in where the waitresses wore roller skates and set your food up on trays balanced on your car window (a lá American Graffiti). So they’re all lounging in the hearse, eating fries and milkshakes, when the corpse suddenly lets out a giant sigh and sits up. Which is, apparently, something corpses do as they settle into death. Everyone runs out of the car and two of the guys absolutely refuse to get back in. The undertaker has to come down to the Eat N’ Park to drive the hearse away. When he gets there a crowd has gathered around the car, and he opens the back door, shoves both sides of the body down so it’ll lie flat, and chastises, “It’s perfectly normal!” before driving off.
Dean is the kind of guy with set bits. Stories about women who get roses tattooed on their chest when they’re young, only to discover the rose has “bloomed” when they get older. His daughter got a tattoo in her lower back, a chameleon, and he told her it was good she didn’t get it on her ass, because then one day it would be a kimono dragon. Ba-doom-doom, ching.
On his way to show us another apartment he passed a woman getting into her car. “How’s it going?” he hollered. “Well. How are you?” “Can’t complain. No one’s listening.”
Other pearls included a set bit about the Clintons that went something like “I’m not saying Clinton was a great president, but they spent 35 million dollars investigating him to find out he was sleeping with Monica Lewinsky.” (“That he wasn’t sleeping with Monica Lewinsky actually,” Steve interjected.) “35 million dollars. They could have bought him a hooker every night for eight years and saved us 34.5 million dollars. And then they’d have known what he was up to. They could have taken pictures.” And then he said Hilary seemed like “the man part of a woman-woman relationship,” because homophobia is becoming a theme.

Pauses in vehicular motion- I

Driving to Pittsburgh yesterday I stopped at the Midway Diner, which overlooks I-78 in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. The exit consisted of two gas stations, the diner, and a Comfort Inn, the last two sharing an oddly vast parking lot. At the gas station it became apparent that the entire place smelled like rotting manure, a sickly, sweet smell that makes you check the bottom of your shoes compulsively I’ve only ever smelled while driving by the epic cattle farms of Nebraska.
The diner was some platonic ideal of a roadside greasy spoon. A long counter, colorful machines at the entrance that will tell you your fortune, your blood pressure or your weight for a quarter, a loop of cloth instead of paper towels in the bathroom, hamburgers and club sandwiches on the table, big red booths, rye bread distinguishable from wonder bread only by a vaguely off-white color, smoking permitted, married waitresses, regulars, and strangers. On the wall above the milkshake machine was the following sign: “Wireless internet now available at the Midway Diner! (Parking lot too).” The future is all around us.
I sat down at the counter, one seat away from an awkward looking older man, skinny, oversized glasses, a Vietnam vet trucker hat, and a bulky, non-digital camera, with a flash on top. Later in the meal he turned to me and, entirely unsolicited, handed over his business card for “No Bull Studios.” “If you know anyone who needs a photographer,” he said, “Or if you know any older ladies, I’m always looking.” At which point the two slim, local truckers, Tony and Parker, who had come in a few minutes earlier, started to snicker at him like they were all in high school. A couple minutes before, Tony, in a friendly attempt to goose the youngest, most attractive waitress in the place (married), had sent a cup of coffee flying in every direction.
My waitress, who looked kind of like Mercedes Ruehl, if Mercedes Ruehl was a 40 year old woman who had been a waitress all her life and not an actress playing one, was making conversation with the two truckers, who apparently come in most everyday, as there was a shorthand dialogue about Parker’s misbehavior this past Friday while they were waiting for iced tea and a club sandwich. To keep the conversation going, Mercedes said the following: “I saw Brokeback Mountain on Sunday,” then in a surprised, defensive tone, “It was good.” Tony and Parker both just sort of rolled their eyes. “No it was really good.” As this apparently was not engendering conversation, she repeated it to the younger, almost-goosed, waitress, who widened her eyes for a laugh. They got to muttering about it, and then the younger girl said, “It can’t be any worse than Desperate Housewives. Those two boys were really going at it,” and then turns to deliver some coffee, looking disgusted. Three hours outside of New York and everyone’s already behaving country. An auspicious beginning.