FUCK YOU, YOU MOTHERFUCKING TIME VORTEX. I FUCKING LOVE DANCING WITH MY FRIENDS.
The F**cking Movie Never Motherf**cking Ends: now overly verbose with commentary. [ go back to part one]
Wandering the city with Hayden all week. I even showed him how to slot machine the fucking parking meters. "It's wealth redistribution!" 10/21/11 4:20:09 PM
Hayden's still really fucking upset about this fucking tent thing. Look, Hayden, for you, a few days ago, this tent thing came to an end. 10/21/11 4:34:47 PM
For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never fucking die. 10/21/11 4:38:06 PMThe closing lines from Ted Kennedy's speech to the Democratic National Convention in 1980. Excuse me, I'll just be over here crying for days.
Hayden says, "That was fucking beautiful, man" and I say, "Now let's go occupy Blago's house, I think he might have a fucking French press." 10/21/11 4:43:12 PM
Cheer the fuck up, Hayden, it's Friday fucking night. 10/21/11 5:02:13 PM
***
Hayden and I are watching the debate show on Blago's big screen. Mitt Romney's pores are fucking terrifying in HD. 11/9/11 7:55:12 PM
It's like Cain TRIES to make it through a two-hour stretch without sexually harassing some poor woman, but he just fucking can't. 11/9/11 8:02:33 PM
Fucking seriously, Cain, go fuck yourself. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, go directly to fuck yourself. 11/9/11 8:04:06 PM
I want to make one thing clear: I can't fucking stand Bachmann, but I hope she has a panic button, or some mace or something, just in case. 11/9/11 8:05:24 PM
To be fair to Cain, Pelosi does prefer to be called "Princess Nancy Organa of the Rebel Alliance." You want to fucking make something of it? 11/9/11 8:07:22 PM
Holy fucking mother of God. I thought my assfuck mayoral opponents were the dumbest fucking boxes of rocks ever assembled for one election. 11/9/11 8:30:43 PMThis was the debate where Cain said "Princess Nancy" wouldn't let a bill get out of committee and Perry couldn't remember the names of the three departments he'd eliminate. Good times.
Seriously, Gingrich, Cain and Bachmann make Chico, Braun and De Valle look like fucking Newton, Edison and Einstein. For fucking real. 11/9/11 8:33:12 PM
But, Rick Perry? You win the golden fucking sombrero of motherfucking dumb. 11/9/11 8:34:55 PM
YOU ARE SO FUCKING DUMB YOU MAKE NFL COACHES WHO PUNT KICK TO DEVIN HESTER LOOK LIKE GEORGE FUCKING HALAS. 11/9/11 8:36:10 PMDevin Hester plays for the Chicago Bears and broke the all-time record for most punt kicks returned for touchdowns in a game this past October. As football pundits everywhere love to ask, "WHY DO TEAMS KEEP KICKING TO DEVIN HESTER?"
Hayden: "Rewind it again! Again!" I'm laughing so hard I'm fucking crying, but I'm crying because this dumb fuck might end up president. 11/9/11 8:37:02 PM
The night takes a fucking depressing turn. Hayden tries to cheer me up by raiding Blago's bribe closet. "Want a solid gold back scratcher?" 11/9/11 8:56:28 PM
I want back into a fucking universe where the fucks running for president can find the Department of Energy with two hands and a flashlight. 11/9/11 9:00:08 PM
But yeah, what the fuck, give me the solid gold ball scratcher. 11/9/11 9:03:46 PM
*
Also, Hayden's growing a mustache. Says it's for something called Movember? Fuck that, show some respect and call it Axelfuckingrodvember. 11/9/11 10:40:57 PM
Hayden says I should grow one, too. "For charity, man!" I say no. "For personal reasons." Truth is, my facial hair looks like fucking pubes. 11/9/11 10:57:25 PM
And I just fucking miss Axelrod's mustache. Fucking shit, man. Pretenders, leave it alone. Don't throw rocks at the mustache throne. 11/9/11 11:14:39 PMOlder Jay-Z, from "Takeover" off The Blueprint. Original lyric is "Please leave it alone / don't throw rocks at the throne."
***
It's so cute that Newt Gingrich is trying to wave his pinky-size dick around this fucking national security debate like he fucking matters. 11/12/11 7:15:29 PM
Watch Newt turn the Patriot Act into a Patriot Contract With America: A commitment to be vigilant against undocumented terrorist janitors. 11/12/11 7:20:36 PM
Sure, Perry, the Obama administration is a complete intelligence failure. I hope you get a Merry fucking Christmas visit from Seal Team Six. 11/12/11 7:28:10 PM
Hayden and I are watching the shit games in Blago's home office. "Who needs four industrial paper shredders?" Hah-fucking-hah. Now beer me. 11/12/11 7:33:48 PM
Here's a funny story about Gingrich. Back in '95, during the government shutdown, Clinton had me follow Newt to his high school reunion. 11/12/11 7:34:18 PM
I tracked him down at this shithole small town diner, and I went there in double birds blazing, my cock hanging out in a paper bag. 11/12/11 7:36:29 PM
Newt acted like he was gonna fucking start some shit, and I said, "Easy there, chief. I don't see hollow point wound care on the menu." 11/12/11 7:39:27 PM
I ordered some fucking eggs, and I said we weren't gonna let Newt pass his little budget. Cause we were gonna pass it for him. 11/12/11 7:41:32 PM
And then I told him that after we passed the budget, we were gonna do another little job. And that dumbfuck Newt said, "Like what?" 11/12/11 7:42:44 PM
"Like I'm gonna put a bullet hole in your fucking forehead and I'm gonna fuck the brain hole." So that ended Newt's government shitdown. 11/12/11 7:50:57 PMLines from Mr. Grocer (Dan Aykroyd), the union-organizing hitman in Gross Pointe Blank. I wanted an homage to a John Cusack movie and I had the hardest time picking one. High Fidelity would have been great because it's set in Chicago, Being John Malkovich would have been awesome because it's about, you know, a portal into the alternate universe of John Malkovich's head. But nothing worked quite right and Mr. Grocer said "fuck" a lot.
Hayden has beer, a whole head of iceberg lettuce, a block of Monterey Jack cheese and a fucking rotisserie chicken. "Do you want a taco?" 11/12/11 8:10:21 PM
Now Newt says he likes the Chilean model for Social Security reform. I sure fucking hope it involves sending old people down a mine shaft. 11/12/11 8:21:49 PM
Holy fuck, Hayden's shredding the lettuce with Blago's shredder! This is some fucking ninja Julia Child shit here! 11/12/11 8:28:45 PMI am totally stealing this from an episode of The Office, I think. Kevin shredded lettuce with a paper shredder in a episode tag once, didn't he?
Blago's shredder destroyed that fucking block of cheese like it was the phone records of an unidentified senate candidate. 11/12/11 8:34:57 PM
We're making bets on whether the shredder can take the whole goddamn rotisserie chicken, bones and all. Loser has to prank call Bachmann. 11/12/11 8:37:05 PM
Hayden's fixing me a taco, I have to call Bachmann and ask her if her refrigerator's getting ex-gay therapy. Totally fucking worth it. 11/12/11 8:40:21 PM
Wolf is finishing off the fuck fest by asking everyone to name their favorite threat to national security like it's a fucking dating show. 11/12/11 8:59:34 PM
Very fucking funny, Wolf. Trick question, the eight biggest threats to national security are standing at podiums up on the fucking stage. 11/12/11 9:01:27 PM
The shit Hayden finds in the bribe closet is getting ridiculous. He just came in wearing a fucking full-length black leather trench coat. 11/12/11 9:22:18 PM
"It's not a trench coat, it's a duster." He looks like Axelrod standing in line to get disappointed by the fucking Matrix sequels. 11/12/11 9:25:56 PMThis is supposed to be Harry Dresden's magical leather duster from The Dreseden Files. I have never read these books, never watched the television show, but Norah mentioned a Dresden Files crossover in her Dear Yuletide letter and when I read a synopsis of the books, I was like, "Yeah, actually, that makes a lot of sense." This was the best I could do based on knowledge cribbed from a Wikipedia article. I just couldn't imagine @MayorEmanuel saying "duster," though, hence the lame "trench coat" joke.
***
I am so fucking all about this fucking cup of coffee in my hand, I want to set up a casual encounter with it on Craigslist. 11/14/11 9:45:06 AM
Hayden split last night. He didn't leave a note, but he took that fucking trench coat. 11/14/11 11:12:37 AM
Think he got bored sitting around in bathrobes, scratching our asses with solid gold back scratchers and crying at the Republican debates. 11/14/11 11:23:37 AM
This universe continues to suck balls: Mayor 1% shitting all over Occupy, the fucking Republican horror show, the NBA lockout clusterfuck. 11/14/11 2:14:56 PM
David Stern, you fucking cockhole. I've got your nuclear winter right here. It's called February in fucking Chicago without the Bulls on TV. 11/14/11 8:20:13 PMThe NBA Players Union broke off negotiations and moved toward taking the labor dispute to court, which drama queen David Stern declared the "nuclear winter of the NBA." Hyperbolic considering the whole thing would get settled less than two weeks later, but for about a week there it really looked like the whole season would be cancelled.
Also: the most challenging part of writing this story is that I prefer to write longhand, and I jot a lot of notes to myself when I'm commuting on the train. Because it was not worth trying to count characters every time I wanted to scrawl something down, I set up al locked dummy Twitter account so I could text things to myself and know they were less than 140 characters. This was the first tweet I sent.
***
Stopped by the Kinkos on LaSalle for the first time in a couple weeks and one of Plouffe's faxes is jamming up the piece-of-shit machine. 11/16/11 8:33:43 PM
Fax from Plouffe: List of stuff the other me isn't allowed to say during a budget speech to City Council. The more things fucking change ... 11/16/11 9:01:54 PM
"1. Don't say you're going to make all those sick CTA employees get second jobs on their fake sick days." Well, why fucking not? 11/16/11 9:07:12 PMAround this time, a report on the CTA's budget troubles was released that showed drivers took an improbably disproportionate number of sick days on Mondays and Fridays.
"2. Don't say 'Who's afraid of a few fucking nuns?' if they ask about water tax increase." Still sad I never got to hang out with other me. 11/16/11 9:12:31 PMOne of the ways that real-life Mayor Emanuel closed the budget deficit was to discontinue a city policy of not charging schools, churches and charities for their water.
"3. Your notes say 'And then I wave around my cock and tell them this is the sword that slew the $636M budget deficit.' Don't do that." 11/16/11 9:20:42 PM
"4. Don't talk about the police overtime budget. Those Occupy assholes hate you enough as it is." 11/16/11 9:35:55 PM
"5. 'David Stern Nut the Fuck Up Fund' is not a line item on the approved final version of your budget." Wait a fucking second ... 11/16/11 9:42:49 PM
Back in the other universe, the budget's still fucked, I'M fucking Mayor 1% and the NBA is still in a fucking lockout? 11/16/11 9:44:06 PM
New theory: the time vortex was caused by WHO FUCKING KNOWS BUT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO MEAN SHIT WAS BETTER OVER THERE, WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED? 11/16/11 9:47:20 PM
I crash out of the Kinko's into the street, and I see strangers waiting, up and down the boulevard, their shadows searching in the night. 11/16/11 10:03:00 PM
Streetlights. People living just to find some fucking emotion, hiding somewhere in the night. 11/16/11 10:06:35 PM
There's an asshole standing right behind me, humming under his breath. It sounds so fucking familiar. I turn around to see who's there. 11/16/11 10:09:10 PM"Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey. A major cliché at this point, but Dan Sinker opened the door by ending the @MayorEmanuel narrative with repeated reference to "Separate Ways." That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Then the taste of celery salt bursts on my tongue and I can still hear the humming, but everything just fucking goes black. 11/16/11 10:10:13 PM
*
New theory: the time vortex was caused by the MULTIPLE FUCKING HEAD INJURIES inflected on me by Mayor Richard M. Motherfucking Daley. 11/17/11 12:01:59 AMThe "new theory" gag was supposed to echo the @MayorEmanuel "new slogan" running gag.
So you can guess that we're standing on the roof of City Hall. And for the first time since I ended up here, there's no buzz saw in my ears. 11/17/11 12:03:17 AM
The charcoal grill waits for us, and I already know what's inside. Daley smoothes his hand over the lid. "You still don't understand." 11/17/11 12:07:29 AM
I step up to the grill and put my hand next to Daley's. It looks like a fucking little kid's hand. The lid's warm under my palm. 11/17/11 12:10:23 AM
Daley reaches for the handle. "It's a portal through infinite dimensions. That doesn't mean there's no law of entropy." He lifts the lid. 11/17/11 12:11:55 AM
I see them again, the million fucking tiny Chicagos in their million parallel universes. But this time I look closer. 11/17/11 12:12:34 AM
Daley points at a pinhead speck. "There's one where Oprah's the mayor of Chicago and she fixed the deficit by selling unicorn shit." 11/17/11 12:14:09 AM
Daley waves his giant sausage of a finger. "There's no Chicago to even be mayor of in that one. It was never rebuilt after the Great Fire." 11/17/11 12:16:47 AM
Daley sighs. "This one's my favorite. 2003 Cubs won the World Series and Kerry Wood's the mayor. City Hall softball league is incredible." 11/17/11 12:17:59 AM
"There's a zombie universe where a zombie version of Dad is still mayor. There's even a universe where Chico's the mayor. It's called Hell." 11/17/11 12:19:03 AM
I can see them, but only because Daley points them out. They're the exception, not the rule. Most of the universes are basically the same. 11/17/11 12:23:32 AMThere's an infinite number of great stories that could have been written about what happened after @MayorEmanuel went through the vortex. A universe where Barack Obama was never elected, a post-apocalyptic universe where Richard J. Daley is a zombie, anything you can imagine. But, for me, the one loophole in Dan Sinker's @MayorEmanuel narrative is this: Why didn't @MayorEmanuel notice when he passed from his own universe to ours? One possible answer: he didn't notice because his universe is basically identical to ours.
I'm the mayor, sure, but the city is still fucking broke and still fucking stuck with the fucking parking meter deal. 11/17/11 12:25:47 AM
The economy is still in the shithole and ordinary people feel so angry and powerless they set up tents in Grant Park just to get arrested. 11/17/11 12:27:14 AM
David Stern is a spineless asshat. Michelle fucking Bachmann is a presidential candidate. Two and a Half Men hasn't been cancelled. 11/17/11 12:28:15 AM
Daley watches across the grill. He says what I already know. "There's a million fucking universes, but most of them are the same old shit." 11/17/11 12:29:53 AM
"For a minute, that universe got to be great because it had two of you. Now you're both back where you belong and it's all just ordinary." 11/17/11 12:31:28 AMThis is my favorite part because it's sort of a meta-commentary on why I loved the @MayorEmanuel story so much. The @MayorEmanuel Twitter phenomenon elevated my awareness of Rahm Emanuel's mayoral election and also marked the last hurrah of a brief golden period of Democratic politics (starting with the 2006 mid-terms and the election of Deval Patrick, peaking with the Obama election and ending with the Emanuel mayoral race, which was already overshadowed by the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives during the 2010 midterms). If you're like me, and you're looking around wondering where the good times between 2006 and 2010 went, it seems possible that they only existed when our universe benefited from the awesome power of two Rahm Emanuels.
There's no smoke coming off the grill, but my eyes still sting. What am I supposed to do? Why is Daley showing me? WHAT'S THE FUCKING POINT? 11/17/11 12:34:19 AM
Daley looks sad, like he wants to say more but he knows he can't. "Roll the dice one more time," he tells me. He starts humming again. 11/17/11 12:35:08 AM
"The movie never ends." And Daley's massive fucking frame towers over me like the skyline, going on and on until all the lights go out. 11/17/11 12:36:57 AMAgain with the Journey lyrics. All popular complaints about how "Don't Stop Believin'" is terrible, I find "the movie never ends" to be a really poignant sentiment of a pop ballad lyric and I've always loved it.
***
Up before the fucking sun and I want to fucking keg stand this fucking cup of coffee. 11/21/11 04:32:26 AM
Slot machining the parking meters on State Street by the library. Still can't believe it, five fucking bucks an hour to park in the Loop. 11/21/11 04:49:41 AM
Seriously, three pay boxes and I've already filled two fuck-it size chicken buckets. $644.75 in quarters, bitches. 11/21/11 04:52:08 AM
*
The Craigslist posting is the fucking same as all the others I saw this weekend: 1994 HONDA CIVIC - $1450 (West Lawn). 11/21/11 9:16:09 AMOriginally @MayorEmanuel was going to drive all these different used Civics the same way that Jack kept taking different Oceanic flights in the Lost episode "Through the Looking Glass" (the one that you find out is a flash-forward and not a flash-back) and the story was going to end with @MayorEmanuel shouting "WE HAVE TO GO BACK!" But the "Through the Looking Glass" homage is kind of the like the "Mirror, Mirror" evil goatee homage. It's either its own 10,000 word cracked-out crossover or nothing.
I'm getting sick of this shit. I'd rather dry fuck a tail pipe than meet any more fucking weirdos who sell their crap on the internet. 11/21/11 9:34:55 AM
Saturday, in Hyde Park, I'm pretty fucking sure Braun in Groucho Marx glasses was trying to sell me a Civic with no back seat for two grand. 11/21/11 9:49:14 AM
Hey Braun, you've got $315,000 in unaccounted campaign funds, replace the back seat in your fucking Civic. 11/21/11 10:05:27 AMSomeone from the Illinois Board of Elections told the Sun-Times that Carol Mosley Braun's documentation was the "worst example" he'd ever seen.
Emailing the poster in West Lawn while I watch a thousand fucking replays of Jay Cutler breaking his thumb. 11/21/11 11/21/11 10:11:26 AM
For fucking serious, Cutler throws an interception and then breaks his thumb tackling like he thinks he's a goddamn free safety. Fuck. 11/21/11 10:23:37 AM
Throw an interception, then break your thumb on the tackle? Why not just set a house on fire and drown the fucking cat putting the fire out? 11/21/11 10:34:45 AMIf your level of interest in football rivals Dan Sinker's: when the quarterback throws an interception, the offensive players go on defense to bring down the intercepting player. Because football teams have a whole line of players whose job it is to make sure the quarterback never gets touched and because the other 10 offensive players are generally going to be further down the field than the quarterback, the quarterback should really be the LAST player to tackle the defender who made the interception, both based on job responsibilities and field placement. So being a quarterback and breaking your thumb on tackling a defender is pretty fucking dumb.
Or, in more fandom-friendly terms: you may recall this was how Jason Street ended up paralyzed on Friday Night Lights.
Hey, Cutlerfucker: In an alternate universe, I'm the FUCKING MAYOR with nine and a half fingers. You can't quarterback the Bears with nine? 11/21/11 10:46:02 AM
Text from West Lawn: "Can only show car before 3pm today, take Orange Line to Ford City, movie theater parking lot." 11/21/11 11:39:04 AM
The fucking Orange Line doesn't go to fucking Ford City. And that's what makes me think this might be the fucking Civic I'm looking for. 11/21/11 11:45:26 AM
*
When the train pulls into Midway station, I can see the planes landing in the distance, swooping low like pot-bellied lazy birds. 11/21/11 1:40:04 PM
The doors close and I'm alone in the car. I don't know what the fuck is happening, but this train is going somewhere I've never been before. 11/21/11 1:52:33 PM
New theory: the time vortex was caused by the paradoxical existence of a fucking Ford City L stop. 11/21/11 2:11:48 PM
As paradoxical non-existent L stops go, this Ford City one is pretty fucking nice. Really clean. I would've shaken a shitload of hands here. 11/21/11 2:17:36 PM
I walk up to the movie theater. The marquee is all show times for some kind of fucking Michael J. Fox retrospective. 11/21/11 2:21:06 PMSo many missed opportunities to do a more extended Back to the Future riff, so few working brain cells left at this point.
The parking lot's empty, except for one beautiful heap of a Civic and fucking Hayden, wearing that fucking trench coat and holding the keys. 11/21/11 2:32:57 PM
Hayden fumbles with the key ring. "Oh, hey, man. Wow, weird coincidence. You saw in the ad that the radio's broken, right?" 11/21/11 2:34:09 PM
I'm not fucking crying. It's just been raining. On my face. I put my hand on the dent in the bumper. I think I can feel the car's heartbeat. 11/21/11 2:37:16 PM
"I'm selling it for a friend who split town, that's why it's so dirty." Every window is covered in a fucking inch of grime except one. 11/21/11 2:39:54 PM
The glass is so clean I could wipe my ass with it. "Yeah, I was trying to just sell it as-is, but no one would buy it with a broken window." 11/21/11 2:41:36 PM
Hayden tosses me the keys. "Well, if you want to buy the car, let's do this. I'm going be late for mathlete practice." 11/21/11 2:44:16 PM
And I want to ask Hayden where he came from and what this all means and what the fuck I should do next. And really, whose car is this? 11/21/11 2:50:28 PM
Hayden finally looks me in the eye. I know he wants to tell me the work begins anew. The hope rises again. The fucking dream lives on. 11/21/11 2:53:28 PMAnd Hayden echoes back the closing lines from Ted Kennedy's speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Excuse me, I'll just be over here crying for WEEKS.
But I need to get somewhere Hayden can't follow. I don't fucking know if I'll make it, but I do know it's time to go now. 11/21/11 2:54:19 PM
So Hayden just takes my $1450 in quarters. "It's your car now, man," he says. "Don't stop believing. Don't fuck it up." 11/21/11 2:55:17 PM
New theory: the time vortex was caused by it doesn't fucking matter, because I am going to fuck that time vortex until it slot machines. 11/21/11 2:57:01 PM
I start humming under my breath. Hayden walks away and I watch him disappear into the distance as I slide into the driver's seat. 11/21/11 2:59:30 PM
The music swells up behind me like the soundtrack to a fucking movie that never motherfucking ends. 11/21/11 3:01:48 PM
I put the key in the fucking ignition and everything starts again. 11/21/11 3:05:37 PMI wanted to end this story with a trailed off ellipsis the same as the ending of the original narrative. But it felt too much like cheating. What's kind of embarrassing is that when I was wringing my hands over how to end this story I ended up thinking about the end of the original @MayorEmanuel narrative reminds me of the last few lines of Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker: "There is a roar as if the world cracked open and I flew inside. I am no more. And satisfied." This isn't either of those things, but ... it does contain an inadvertent R. Kelly reference?
Wandering the city with Hayden all week. I even showed him how to slot machine the fucking parking meters. "It's wealth redistribution!" 10/21/11 4:20:09 PM
Hayden's still really fucking upset about this fucking tent thing. Look, Hayden, for you, a few days ago, this tent thing came to an end. 10/21/11 4:34:47 PM
For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never fucking die. 10/21/11 4:38:06 PMThe closing lines from Ted Kennedy's speech to the Democratic National Convention in 1980. Excuse me, I'll just be over here crying for days.
Hayden says, "That was fucking beautiful, man" and I say, "Now let's go occupy Blago's house, I think he might have a fucking French press." 10/21/11 4:43:12 PM
Cheer the fuck up, Hayden, it's Friday fucking night. 10/21/11 5:02:13 PM
***
Hayden and I are watching the debate show on Blago's big screen. Mitt Romney's pores are fucking terrifying in HD. 11/9/11 7:55:12 PM
It's like Cain TRIES to make it through a two-hour stretch without sexually harassing some poor woman, but he just fucking can't. 11/9/11 8:02:33 PM
Fucking seriously, Cain, go fuck yourself. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, go directly to fuck yourself. 11/9/11 8:04:06 PM
I want to make one thing clear: I can't fucking stand Bachmann, but I hope she has a panic button, or some mace or something, just in case. 11/9/11 8:05:24 PM
To be fair to Cain, Pelosi does prefer to be called "Princess Nancy Organa of the Rebel Alliance." You want to fucking make something of it? 11/9/11 8:07:22 PM
Holy fucking mother of God. I thought my assfuck mayoral opponents were the dumbest fucking boxes of rocks ever assembled for one election. 11/9/11 8:30:43 PMThis was the debate where Cain said "Princess Nancy" wouldn't let a bill get out of committee and Perry couldn't remember the names of the three departments he'd eliminate. Good times.
Seriously, Gingrich, Cain and Bachmann make Chico, Braun and De Valle look like fucking Newton, Edison and Einstein. For fucking real. 11/9/11 8:33:12 PM
But, Rick Perry? You win the golden fucking sombrero of motherfucking dumb. 11/9/11 8:34:55 PM
YOU ARE SO FUCKING DUMB YOU MAKE NFL COACHES WHO PUNT KICK TO DEVIN HESTER LOOK LIKE GEORGE FUCKING HALAS. 11/9/11 8:36:10 PMDevin Hester plays for the Chicago Bears and broke the all-time record for most punt kicks returned for touchdowns in a game this past October. As football pundits everywhere love to ask, "WHY DO TEAMS KEEP KICKING TO DEVIN HESTER?"
Hayden: "Rewind it again! Again!" I'm laughing so hard I'm fucking crying, but I'm crying because this dumb fuck might end up president. 11/9/11 8:37:02 PM
The night takes a fucking depressing turn. Hayden tries to cheer me up by raiding Blago's bribe closet. "Want a solid gold back scratcher?" 11/9/11 8:56:28 PM
I want back into a fucking universe where the fucks running for president can find the Department of Energy with two hands and a flashlight. 11/9/11 9:00:08 PM
But yeah, what the fuck, give me the solid gold ball scratcher. 11/9/11 9:03:46 PM
*
Also, Hayden's growing a mustache. Says it's for something called Movember? Fuck that, show some respect and call it Axelfuckingrodvember. 11/9/11 10:40:57 PM
Hayden says I should grow one, too. "For charity, man!" I say no. "For personal reasons." Truth is, my facial hair looks like fucking pubes. 11/9/11 10:57:25 PM
And I just fucking miss Axelrod's mustache. Fucking shit, man. Pretenders, leave it alone. Don't throw rocks at the mustache throne. 11/9/11 11:14:39 PMOlder Jay-Z, from "Takeover" off The Blueprint. Original lyric is "Please leave it alone / don't throw rocks at the throne."
***
It's so cute that Newt Gingrich is trying to wave his pinky-size dick around this fucking national security debate like he fucking matters. 11/12/11 7:15:29 PM
Watch Newt turn the Patriot Act into a Patriot Contract With America: A commitment to be vigilant against undocumented terrorist janitors. 11/12/11 7:20:36 PM
Sure, Perry, the Obama administration is a complete intelligence failure. I hope you get a Merry fucking Christmas visit from Seal Team Six. 11/12/11 7:28:10 PM
Hayden and I are watching the shit games in Blago's home office. "Who needs four industrial paper shredders?" Hah-fucking-hah. Now beer me. 11/12/11 7:33:48 PM
Here's a funny story about Gingrich. Back in '95, during the government shutdown, Clinton had me follow Newt to his high school reunion. 11/12/11 7:34:18 PM
I tracked him down at this shithole small town diner, and I went there in double birds blazing, my cock hanging out in a paper bag. 11/12/11 7:36:29 PM
Newt acted like he was gonna fucking start some shit, and I said, "Easy there, chief. I don't see hollow point wound care on the menu." 11/12/11 7:39:27 PM
I ordered some fucking eggs, and I said we weren't gonna let Newt pass his little budget. Cause we were gonna pass it for him. 11/12/11 7:41:32 PM
And then I told him that after we passed the budget, we were gonna do another little job. And that dumbfuck Newt said, "Like what?" 11/12/11 7:42:44 PM
"Like I'm gonna put a bullet hole in your fucking forehead and I'm gonna fuck the brain hole." So that ended Newt's government shitdown. 11/12/11 7:50:57 PMLines from Mr. Grocer (Dan Aykroyd), the union-organizing hitman in Gross Pointe Blank. I wanted an homage to a John Cusack movie and I had the hardest time picking one. High Fidelity would have been great because it's set in Chicago, Being John Malkovich would have been awesome because it's about, you know, a portal into the alternate universe of John Malkovich's head. But nothing worked quite right and Mr. Grocer said "fuck" a lot.
Hayden has beer, a whole head of iceberg lettuce, a block of Monterey Jack cheese and a fucking rotisserie chicken. "Do you want a taco?" 11/12/11 8:10:21 PM
Now Newt says he likes the Chilean model for Social Security reform. I sure fucking hope it involves sending old people down a mine shaft. 11/12/11 8:21:49 PM
Holy fuck, Hayden's shredding the lettuce with Blago's shredder! This is some fucking ninja Julia Child shit here! 11/12/11 8:28:45 PMI am totally stealing this from an episode of The Office, I think. Kevin shredded lettuce with a paper shredder in a episode tag once, didn't he?
Blago's shredder destroyed that fucking block of cheese like it was the phone records of an unidentified senate candidate. 11/12/11 8:34:57 PM
We're making bets on whether the shredder can take the whole goddamn rotisserie chicken, bones and all. Loser has to prank call Bachmann. 11/12/11 8:37:05 PM
Hayden's fixing me a taco, I have to call Bachmann and ask her if her refrigerator's getting ex-gay therapy. Totally fucking worth it. 11/12/11 8:40:21 PM
Wolf is finishing off the fuck fest by asking everyone to name their favorite threat to national security like it's a fucking dating show. 11/12/11 8:59:34 PM
Very fucking funny, Wolf. Trick question, the eight biggest threats to national security are standing at podiums up on the fucking stage. 11/12/11 9:01:27 PM
The shit Hayden finds in the bribe closet is getting ridiculous. He just came in wearing a fucking full-length black leather trench coat. 11/12/11 9:22:18 PM
"It's not a trench coat, it's a duster." He looks like Axelrod standing in line to get disappointed by the fucking Matrix sequels. 11/12/11 9:25:56 PMThis is supposed to be Harry Dresden's magical leather duster from The Dreseden Files. I have never read these books, never watched the television show, but Norah mentioned a Dresden Files crossover in her Dear Yuletide letter and when I read a synopsis of the books, I was like, "Yeah, actually, that makes a lot of sense." This was the best I could do based on knowledge cribbed from a Wikipedia article. I just couldn't imagine @MayorEmanuel saying "duster," though, hence the lame "trench coat" joke.
***
I am so fucking all about this fucking cup of coffee in my hand, I want to set up a casual encounter with it on Craigslist. 11/14/11 9:45:06 AM
Hayden split last night. He didn't leave a note, but he took that fucking trench coat. 11/14/11 11:12:37 AM
Think he got bored sitting around in bathrobes, scratching our asses with solid gold back scratchers and crying at the Republican debates. 11/14/11 11:23:37 AM
This universe continues to suck balls: Mayor 1% shitting all over Occupy, the fucking Republican horror show, the NBA lockout clusterfuck. 11/14/11 2:14:56 PM
David Stern, you fucking cockhole. I've got your nuclear winter right here. It's called February in fucking Chicago without the Bulls on TV. 11/14/11 8:20:13 PMThe NBA Players Union broke off negotiations and moved toward taking the labor dispute to court, which drama queen David Stern declared the "nuclear winter of the NBA." Hyperbolic considering the whole thing would get settled less than two weeks later, but for about a week there it really looked like the whole season would be cancelled.
Also: the most challenging part of writing this story is that I prefer to write longhand, and I jot a lot of notes to myself when I'm commuting on the train. Because it was not worth trying to count characters every time I wanted to scrawl something down, I set up al locked dummy Twitter account so I could text things to myself and know they were less than 140 characters. This was the first tweet I sent.
***
Stopped by the Kinkos on LaSalle for the first time in a couple weeks and one of Plouffe's faxes is jamming up the piece-of-shit machine. 11/16/11 8:33:43 PM
Fax from Plouffe: List of stuff the other me isn't allowed to say during a budget speech to City Council. The more things fucking change ... 11/16/11 9:01:54 PM
"1. Don't say you're going to make all those sick CTA employees get second jobs on their fake sick days." Well, why fucking not? 11/16/11 9:07:12 PMAround this time, a report on the CTA's budget troubles was released that showed drivers took an improbably disproportionate number of sick days on Mondays and Fridays.
"2. Don't say 'Who's afraid of a few fucking nuns?' if they ask about water tax increase." Still sad I never got to hang out with other me. 11/16/11 9:12:31 PMOne of the ways that real-life Mayor Emanuel closed the budget deficit was to discontinue a city policy of not charging schools, churches and charities for their water.
"3. Your notes say 'And then I wave around my cock and tell them this is the sword that slew the $636M budget deficit.' Don't do that." 11/16/11 9:20:42 PM
"4. Don't talk about the police overtime budget. Those Occupy assholes hate you enough as it is." 11/16/11 9:35:55 PM
"5. 'David Stern Nut the Fuck Up Fund' is not a line item on the approved final version of your budget." Wait a fucking second ... 11/16/11 9:42:49 PM
Back in the other universe, the budget's still fucked, I'M fucking Mayor 1% and the NBA is still in a fucking lockout? 11/16/11 9:44:06 PM
New theory: the time vortex was caused by WHO FUCKING KNOWS BUT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO MEAN SHIT WAS BETTER OVER THERE, WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED? 11/16/11 9:47:20 PM
I crash out of the Kinko's into the street, and I see strangers waiting, up and down the boulevard, their shadows searching in the night. 11/16/11 10:03:00 PM
Streetlights. People living just to find some fucking emotion, hiding somewhere in the night. 11/16/11 10:06:35 PM
There's an asshole standing right behind me, humming under his breath. It sounds so fucking familiar. I turn around to see who's there. 11/16/11 10:09:10 PM"Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey. A major cliché at this point, but Dan Sinker opened the door by ending the @MayorEmanuel narrative with repeated reference to "Separate Ways." That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Then the taste of celery salt bursts on my tongue and I can still hear the humming, but everything just fucking goes black. 11/16/11 10:10:13 PM
*
New theory: the time vortex was caused by the MULTIPLE FUCKING HEAD INJURIES inflected on me by Mayor Richard M. Motherfucking Daley. 11/17/11 12:01:59 AMThe "new theory" gag was supposed to echo the @MayorEmanuel "new slogan" running gag.
So you can guess that we're standing on the roof of City Hall. And for the first time since I ended up here, there's no buzz saw in my ears. 11/17/11 12:03:17 AM
The charcoal grill waits for us, and I already know what's inside. Daley smoothes his hand over the lid. "You still don't understand." 11/17/11 12:07:29 AM
I step up to the grill and put my hand next to Daley's. It looks like a fucking little kid's hand. The lid's warm under my palm. 11/17/11 12:10:23 AM
Daley reaches for the handle. "It's a portal through infinite dimensions. That doesn't mean there's no law of entropy." He lifts the lid. 11/17/11 12:11:55 AM
I see them again, the million fucking tiny Chicagos in their million parallel universes. But this time I look closer. 11/17/11 12:12:34 AM
Daley points at a pinhead speck. "There's one where Oprah's the mayor of Chicago and she fixed the deficit by selling unicorn shit." 11/17/11 12:14:09 AM
Daley waves his giant sausage of a finger. "There's no Chicago to even be mayor of in that one. It was never rebuilt after the Great Fire." 11/17/11 12:16:47 AM
Daley sighs. "This one's my favorite. 2003 Cubs won the World Series and Kerry Wood's the mayor. City Hall softball league is incredible." 11/17/11 12:17:59 AM
"There's a zombie universe where a zombie version of Dad is still mayor. There's even a universe where Chico's the mayor. It's called Hell." 11/17/11 12:19:03 AM
I can see them, but only because Daley points them out. They're the exception, not the rule. Most of the universes are basically the same. 11/17/11 12:23:32 AMThere's an infinite number of great stories that could have been written about what happened after @MayorEmanuel went through the vortex. A universe where Barack Obama was never elected, a post-apocalyptic universe where Richard J. Daley is a zombie, anything you can imagine. But, for me, the one loophole in Dan Sinker's @MayorEmanuel narrative is this: Why didn't @MayorEmanuel notice when he passed from his own universe to ours? One possible answer: he didn't notice because his universe is basically identical to ours.
I'm the mayor, sure, but the city is still fucking broke and still fucking stuck with the fucking parking meter deal. 11/17/11 12:25:47 AM
The economy is still in the shithole and ordinary people feel so angry and powerless they set up tents in Grant Park just to get arrested. 11/17/11 12:27:14 AM
David Stern is a spineless asshat. Michelle fucking Bachmann is a presidential candidate. Two and a Half Men hasn't been cancelled. 11/17/11 12:28:15 AM
Daley watches across the grill. He says what I already know. "There's a million fucking universes, but most of them are the same old shit." 11/17/11 12:29:53 AM
"For a minute, that universe got to be great because it had two of you. Now you're both back where you belong and it's all just ordinary." 11/17/11 12:31:28 AMThis is my favorite part because it's sort of a meta-commentary on why I loved the @MayorEmanuel story so much. The @MayorEmanuel Twitter phenomenon elevated my awareness of Rahm Emanuel's mayoral election and also marked the last hurrah of a brief golden period of Democratic politics (starting with the 2006 mid-terms and the election of Deval Patrick, peaking with the Obama election and ending with the Emanuel mayoral race, which was already overshadowed by the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives during the 2010 midterms). If you're like me, and you're looking around wondering where the good times between 2006 and 2010 went, it seems possible that they only existed when our universe benefited from the awesome power of two Rahm Emanuels.
There's no smoke coming off the grill, but my eyes still sting. What am I supposed to do? Why is Daley showing me? WHAT'S THE FUCKING POINT? 11/17/11 12:34:19 AM
Daley looks sad, like he wants to say more but he knows he can't. "Roll the dice one more time," he tells me. He starts humming again. 11/17/11 12:35:08 AM
"The movie never ends." And Daley's massive fucking frame towers over me like the skyline, going on and on until all the lights go out. 11/17/11 12:36:57 AMAgain with the Journey lyrics. All popular complaints about how "Don't Stop Believin'" is terrible, I find "the movie never ends" to be a really poignant sentiment of a pop ballad lyric and I've always loved it.
***
Up before the fucking sun and I want to fucking keg stand this fucking cup of coffee. 11/21/11 04:32:26 AM
Slot machining the parking meters on State Street by the library. Still can't believe it, five fucking bucks an hour to park in the Loop. 11/21/11 04:49:41 AM
Seriously, three pay boxes and I've already filled two fuck-it size chicken buckets. $644.75 in quarters, bitches. 11/21/11 04:52:08 AM
*
The Craigslist posting is the fucking same as all the others I saw this weekend: 1994 HONDA CIVIC - $1450 (West Lawn). 11/21/11 9:16:09 AMOriginally @MayorEmanuel was going to drive all these different used Civics the same way that Jack kept taking different Oceanic flights in the Lost episode "Through the Looking Glass" (the one that you find out is a flash-forward and not a flash-back) and the story was going to end with @MayorEmanuel shouting "WE HAVE TO GO BACK!" But the "Through the Looking Glass" homage is kind of the like the "Mirror, Mirror" evil goatee homage. It's either its own 10,000 word cracked-out crossover or nothing.
I'm getting sick of this shit. I'd rather dry fuck a tail pipe than meet any more fucking weirdos who sell their crap on the internet. 11/21/11 9:34:55 AM
Saturday, in Hyde Park, I'm pretty fucking sure Braun in Groucho Marx glasses was trying to sell me a Civic with no back seat for two grand. 11/21/11 9:49:14 AM
Hey Braun, you've got $315,000 in unaccounted campaign funds, replace the back seat in your fucking Civic. 11/21/11 10:05:27 AMSomeone from the Illinois Board of Elections told the Sun-Times that Carol Mosley Braun's documentation was the "worst example" he'd ever seen.
Emailing the poster in West Lawn while I watch a thousand fucking replays of Jay Cutler breaking his thumb. 11/21/11 11/21/11 10:11:26 AM
For fucking serious, Cutler throws an interception and then breaks his thumb tackling like he thinks he's a goddamn free safety. Fuck. 11/21/11 10:23:37 AM
Throw an interception, then break your thumb on the tackle? Why not just set a house on fire and drown the fucking cat putting the fire out? 11/21/11 10:34:45 AMIf your level of interest in football rivals Dan Sinker's: when the quarterback throws an interception, the offensive players go on defense to bring down the intercepting player. Because football teams have a whole line of players whose job it is to make sure the quarterback never gets touched and because the other 10 offensive players are generally going to be further down the field than the quarterback, the quarterback should really be the LAST player to tackle the defender who made the interception, both based on job responsibilities and field placement. So being a quarterback and breaking your thumb on tackling a defender is pretty fucking dumb.
Or, in more fandom-friendly terms: you may recall this was how Jason Street ended up paralyzed on Friday Night Lights.
Hey, Cutlerfucker: In an alternate universe, I'm the FUCKING MAYOR with nine and a half fingers. You can't quarterback the Bears with nine? 11/21/11 10:46:02 AM
Text from West Lawn: "Can only show car before 3pm today, take Orange Line to Ford City, movie theater parking lot." 11/21/11 11:39:04 AM
The fucking Orange Line doesn't go to fucking Ford City. And that's what makes me think this might be the fucking Civic I'm looking for. 11/21/11 11:45:26 AM
*
When the train pulls into Midway station, I can see the planes landing in the distance, swooping low like pot-bellied lazy birds. 11/21/11 1:40:04 PM
The doors close and I'm alone in the car. I don't know what the fuck is happening, but this train is going somewhere I've never been before. 11/21/11 1:52:33 PM
New theory: the time vortex was caused by the paradoxical existence of a fucking Ford City L stop. 11/21/11 2:11:48 PM
As paradoxical non-existent L stops go, this Ford City one is pretty fucking nice. Really clean. I would've shaken a shitload of hands here. 11/21/11 2:17:36 PM
I walk up to the movie theater. The marquee is all show times for some kind of fucking Michael J. Fox retrospective. 11/21/11 2:21:06 PMSo many missed opportunities to do a more extended Back to the Future riff, so few working brain cells left at this point.
The parking lot's empty, except for one beautiful heap of a Civic and fucking Hayden, wearing that fucking trench coat and holding the keys. 11/21/11 2:32:57 PM
Hayden fumbles with the key ring. "Oh, hey, man. Wow, weird coincidence. You saw in the ad that the radio's broken, right?" 11/21/11 2:34:09 PM
I'm not fucking crying. It's just been raining. On my face. I put my hand on the dent in the bumper. I think I can feel the car's heartbeat. 11/21/11 2:37:16 PM
"I'm selling it for a friend who split town, that's why it's so dirty." Every window is covered in a fucking inch of grime except one. 11/21/11 2:39:54 PM
The glass is so clean I could wipe my ass with it. "Yeah, I was trying to just sell it as-is, but no one would buy it with a broken window." 11/21/11 2:41:36 PM
Hayden tosses me the keys. "Well, if you want to buy the car, let's do this. I'm going be late for mathlete practice." 11/21/11 2:44:16 PM
And I want to ask Hayden where he came from and what this all means and what the fuck I should do next. And really, whose car is this? 11/21/11 2:50:28 PM
Hayden finally looks me in the eye. I know he wants to tell me the work begins anew. The hope rises again. The fucking dream lives on. 11/21/11 2:53:28 PMAnd Hayden echoes back the closing lines from Ted Kennedy's speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Excuse me, I'll just be over here crying for WEEKS.
But I need to get somewhere Hayden can't follow. I don't fucking know if I'll make it, but I do know it's time to go now. 11/21/11 2:54:19 PM
So Hayden just takes my $1450 in quarters. "It's your car now, man," he says. "Don't stop believing. Don't fuck it up." 11/21/11 2:55:17 PM
New theory: the time vortex was caused by it doesn't fucking matter, because I am going to fuck that time vortex until it slot machines. 11/21/11 2:57:01 PM
I start humming under my breath. Hayden walks away and I watch him disappear into the distance as I slide into the driver's seat. 11/21/11 2:59:30 PM
The music swells up behind me like the soundtrack to a fucking movie that never motherfucking ends. 11/21/11 3:01:48 PM
I put the key in the fucking ignition and everything starts again. 11/21/11 3:05:37 PMI wanted to end this story with a trailed off ellipsis the same as the ending of the original narrative. But it felt too much like cheating. What's kind of embarrassing is that when I was wringing my hands over how to end this story I ended up thinking about the end of the original @MayorEmanuel narrative reminds me of the last few lines of Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker: "There is a roar as if the world cracked open and I flew inside. I am no more. And satisfied." This isn't either of those things, but ... it does contain an inadvertent R. Kelly reference?