This past summer I was at the Pilsen Food Truck Social, enjoying a Chocrute Kabob from Dusek’s Board & Beer and reading Chicago reclusive author Clive Javanski’s latest essay, “Am I Some Kind of Asshole?” when Mosquito walked over. Mosquito, also known as Monkey Wrench or Spider, is a longtime acquaintance who does work on my Jeep and many other friends’ cars. He’s our group’s mechanic. Mechanic of the assholes. His hands are perpetually dirty but he gets the job done. He doesn’t go on the Internet a lot but when he does it’s usually odd. Like the time when he found a dead mole in his backyard and was perplexed by it. He said he went online to see if moles have eyes.…
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Not long ago I traveled to Austin, Texas with my friend Mosquito. We called it the “Beers, Barbecue, and Biking” tour. “You guys don’t look ready for biking,” said the friendly bicycle rental man. “But my man, we are ready for beers and barbecue,” I said. The man runs Streamline Cycles where Mosquito and I were renting our bikes. Maybe he thought we didn’t look ready for biking because it was 100 degrees and Mosquito had his bike shirt tucked into his blue jeans. I had a cotton T-shirt and shorts that only became shorts because they unzipped from the lightweight hiking pants I wore. We biked along the pea gravel trail around the Colorado River and Lady Bird Lake. Just off the bike…
The last time I was at a concert with Aidan it was a year ago to see Warpaint at Thalia Hall in Pilsen. You can read Aidan’s review of that show here. In August we attended the Depeche Mode Global Spirit Tour at whatever-the-hell they are calling it theater in Tinley Park, a southwestern suburb of Chicago. And wouldn’t you know it, Warpaint was the opening act. I also joined Aidan to see Depeche Mode the last time they were in town. You can read that review here. So introductory song this year was “Revolution” by the Beatles. It was cool, but the intro song used to be one of their own instrumentals, usually from whatever album they had out that year. Aidan: I…
The Dodgy 