The Great Gig In the Sky

I had this dream the other night where I was at a comedy club, or was it a strip bar?  It was hard to tell because the late great Robert Schimmel was trying to do his set on the same stage as a stripper.  I remember being pissed at the time because there were some drunks heckling him, but that's to be expected.  It's just weird trying to make jokes with a woman to your left taking her clothes off.

Here I was yelling at these jerks to shut up, but Schimmel was so understanding.  He was saying, "It's all right.  A gig's a gig."

The real life Robert Schimmel was in a car wreck in which his 19-year-old daughter was driving and the car flipped over on its side.  His son in the car was not hurt at all, his daughter sustained some injuries, but sadly, Mr. Schimmel died from his injuries.

"Yup, she has no clothes on, but listen to this . . ."

I guess I visited him in a dream state in that great Titty Bar/Comedy Club in the sky the other night.  And he was good to see him truly at peace when he said to me "A gig's a gig."

The Lads

I had been meaning to get together with my buddy Skittles for some time now, as he just moved to Chicago from Ireland a few weeks ago. I met Skittles during a summer working at Navy Pier together taking pictures of tourists. I thought, it being a Wednesday, that I would just have a beer or two, catch up on old times, and then leave shortly after the Bulls game. Instead, when I stepped into the bar, I saw around 5 familiar Irish faces from that summer, one of whom was having a bachelor party. That's right: A bunch of drunken Irishmen who I know and love had come out to Chicago for a stag party, and I had unknowingly stepped into it.

I could have stuck to my guns with my self-imposed curfew, but come on, these lads are great fun and I hadn't seen them in years. Here are some highlights in no particular order:

1. There was a little Black girl in the first bar (there would be a few) who we were calling Rooty Huxtable (hope that's not racist), and one lad, Plastico, said, "Huxtable. That's a magnificent surname."

2. When we were reminiscing about that summer a few years back, they were all saying how a picture of a rapist on the loose at the time had his sketch on the door of every bar and club on the north side of Chicago, and the guy looked just like one of the lads, Dunigan. I don't remember this, but it has to be true because even Dunigan, a guy too nice to do anything remotely as heinous as rape, had to admit it to be true.

3. We were trying to think of what bar had a good special on Wednesday nights, as when they were here last, all the Irish kids working on the Pier knew the schedule of the best specials so that each and every night they could find a place to drink extremely cheaply. What's funny is that when you went into one of those places, you would learn that the word had spread to Irish kids all over the city, and you would see it packed full of sun burnt Irishmen, happily drinking away their wages.

4. I don't remember why, but I was asking them what the expression is in Ireland for being horny or having a boner, and as it turns out, it's "on the horn" or a you're like a "bag of horns." Try to work that in a conversation sometime soon, Seven Readers.

5. The lads had plans to go to nudey bar, something I wasn't game for on a Wednesday, and Skittles was saying that the last time he was at one was when he was last in Chicago, when he and Pony (a lad who couldn't make it out for the stag but was missed dearly) went to such a place with a raging cokehead they met that night by the name of Phillip Kuntz. Old Kuntzy took a liking to the boys and bought them their drinks and titty bucks all night, but when he started to have an intense freak out/meltdown in the cab, the lads made a "quick exit."

6. I guess there's something called Chess Boxing where guys alternate rounds of boxing and a few minutes of speed chess for a total of 12 minutes of chess, and you can win by either checkmate or knockout. Yes, something that stupid exists, we talked about it, and you can see it here:


7. While at the titty bar**, I learned that, like Christmas, it's better to give than to receive. I'll explain: Remember when you were a little kid and all you cared about what was present you got rather than what you got other people, but then as you got older, you really wanted to know that people liked what you picked out for them? Well, I'm finding titty bars to be kinda like that because I had so much fun picking out the perfect stripper for the bachelor, Buttons, to spend my money on him, and I ultimately decided upon a beautiful Russian one (or at least she faked a good accent) by the name of Kassandra who was sitting all alone. I asked her what she was doing sitting there all by her lonesome, and she said she was waiting for me. Of course she was! They're such sweet talkers (read bullshitters) in those place. In any case, Buttons was quite pleased with the Russian's work.

8. Kassandra was the best looking and arguably the most "talented***," but the funniest one by far was one by the name of Heidi the Mountain Girl, who dressed not unlike the famous literature hero of the Swiss Alps. After she sat on my lap, I asked her why she went by the mountain girl, and she said because of her mountains, motioning towards her giant fake boobs. Duh! Then she said she wanted to do the splits on my face. I asked in which direction, and after thinking about it for a moment, she said the outwards way. I guess I really didn't have a preference as this was Buttons' night, and as such, I bought him a dance from the Mountain Girl as well.

9. A nudey bar on a Wednesday night is ordinarily a horrible idea, but it was so good to see all these gents. They're such great guys that if they asked really nice, I think I'd do the splits on their faces in any direction they saw fit.

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*Phillip, if you googled yourself and found this blog, I hope you're not offended, and I hope you've cleaned up. God's speed, Kuntzy.
**Never mind what I said in number 5 about limitations on school nights. It was just too much fun to see these guys.
***Another of the lads, Tonto, agreed, so that's two Irishmen giving Kassandra a nod for a Lappy, which is a lap dance award I just made up.

Nude Field Goal Kicking???!?!?!

I didn't think my night could get any better after, to quote a friend, "the best worst game ever or worst best game ever," but then I heard God speak to me on the radio. First the game. The Chicago Bears turned the ball over 6 times, we were down 20 at half, and we scored ZERO offensive touchdowns. I am taking full credit for this victory, because I tried everything to shake up this Bear offense. I changed chairs, changed lighting, and put on a head band for the 2nd half. You know what did it though? I turned the television off. After the 6th turnover, down 13, and with hardly any time left on the clock, I was disgusted and went off to bed. I won the game with that move, and frankly I'm really pissed that Brian Urlacher didn't thank me in his press conference.

Now back to the subject at hand. As I'm brushing my teeth I hear an advertisement on the radio for The Admiral Theatre, a local Chicago strip joint, and I could have sworn I heard Nude Field Goal Kicking. But I couldn't have heard that because that is simply too funny and brilliant. If something that awesome existed then we wouldn't have any problems with Korea and nuclear weapons. George and that guy with the big glasses would have a beer, watch a few greased up nude girls fall down trying to kick a ball, have a few laughs, and then immediately both disarm.

So, I did a little google search to see if I heard what I thought I heard. I found nothing on The Admiral website mentioning any football related nakedness, but I didn't give up there. I actually called them up and spoke to a representative. Here was the conversation.

Me: I just heard an advertisement on the radio, and did they say nude field goal kicking?
Nudey Bar Receptionist: Yes. Every Monday night after the game.
Me: So, we're talking 3 nude girls? One snapping, one holding, and one kicking a field goal?
NBR: Yeah, I guess. Every Monday.
Me: I will see you on Monday.

A week from today The Gancer may be engaging in some investigative reporting, and I just might walk on as a long snapper . . .*

*For my Austrailian readers, a long snapper is the guy who hikes the football between his legs a long distance. Typically, that is all he does, unlike the center, who hikes the ball and blocks every other down. The long snapper hikes the ball and gets mauled over by marauding opponents who are trying to block punts.

'Nudey Bucks': They're As Good As Money.

I have to tell you all about one the craziest pairs of dates, hell, one of the craziest pairs of nights I’ve ever experienced. I met this girl out for “a drink.” I’m not sure why we say “a drink,” because for me that usually turns into ten, and it seems like the girls I meet have no problem with that. She had a final exam she hadn’t studied for the following day, so she couldn’t stay out long. It seems she was a 26-year-old undergraduate student taking only one class over the summer, which her father was paying for, and she wasn’t working, so her schedule was WIDE open for dates.

I noticed that another table had a “table tapper,” which is a meter high cylinder of the equivalent of seven beers in it with a tapper attached. This contraption rests on your table and points toward the heavens. I expressed an interest in it, and SHE basically talked me into getting one. Final exam, schminal exam. We finished one of those bad boys full of Blue Moon, and that was on top of the few we had before that. During our consumption of a meter’s worth of libations, I heard ALL about this gal’s life, and while I will say it was interesting, a lot of the information is not stuff you would want to share on a first date. I think being a therapist of sorts makes me a natural candidate for people to share their life story. The thing is, I’m a good listener, and I enjoy learning new things about new people. Because I like this sort of thing, and because I like to drink, I hang around on a date way longer than I should. She told me about a crazy ex that she had. I know, everyone has had a crazy ex, but this guy was straight up bonkers! Top 3 craziest things he did:

3) As a form of stress relief, he liked to laminate things. She would come home to find he had laminated a bunch of papers and put them on little rings.

2) He tried to please her by “leap frogging” two cars to her work so she could have one and he could drive one home. He’d drive one car a ways, park it, run back to the other car, and drive to where he had left the other car. What a great concept! It’s like Indian Running . . .

3) He called her to tell her to meet him in the parking lot of her work, and when she did she found him trying to hang himself in his Mini Cooper with a necktie slung around the coat hook.

On our second date, I know what you’re thinking, but she was hot, she was telling me how she loved the female body. She was not a lesbian or anything, but she enjoyed looking at nudey magazines and going to nudey bars. I stayed with this topic since, as Roger Dodger would say, it was fertile ground. Eventually we decided it would be a good idea for us to go back to her apartment to get her “nudey coupons,” which are as good as money in a particular nudey bar, and then go off to that very nudey bar. I thought this was just a means to get back to the apartment without saying the words, you know, like do you want to see my tarot cards, but sure enough, she had me wait downstairs while she fetched the coupons.

So, we’re at the nudey bar spending “nudey coupons” or “titty bucks,” which ever your prefer, and as it turns out it’s amateur night. This is a huge plus for us, since we could have a ball critiquing the physicality and technique of these young ladies. Our votes didn’t count, but I have to say that we were shrewd and informed judges. When the professionals started doing their thing, we weren’t too impressed with any of them either, that is until Bambi took the stage. Bambi was a petite, African American woman who could do ALL the tricks with the pole. She really could have been a gymnast given the athleticism it took to pull off some of those maneuvers. Well, we each got a lap dance from Bambi, and not long after, our nudey bucks ran out, and immediately after that we left. Then some stuff happened, then all my roommates woke up, then we tried dating for a while, then she went to Hawaii and sent me dirty text message pics, then she got back, then it didn't work out.

We never recaptured the carefree fun of spending ‘titty bucks’ at a nudey bar. That really is setting the bar awful high.