Chicago -
By The Beachwood Meetup Affairs Desk
The newest Chicago meetups.
* The Oak Lawn We Never Pay Full Price For Anything Group
* The Unseen World
* Chicago Super Happy Fun Time!
* Clothing for 24/7 Body Detox for Health is Wealth
* Chicago-NW Burbs Trading Club
* The Naperville Career Changers Meetup Group
Posted on March 31, 2010
By Drew Adamek
I’ve been married for a year-and-a-half. I’ve known my wife for eight years; we’ve been living together for five.
I enjoy everything about being married: the companionship; the shared responsibilities; the ups and downs. Marriage, and the attendant maturity and growth that comes with it, is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I am constantly surprised by how easily I’ve settled into married life. For most of my adulthood, I was either a dedicated commitment-phobe or a 300-pound slob who couldn’t get a girlfriend.
My bachelorhood was a miserable experience punctuated by long stretches of loneliness, bitterness and frustration. I didn’t have the emotional maturity or bravery to be a very good dater. I was either running away from or desperately clinging to former girlfriends, and I made unnecessary messes out of a lot of relationships for whatever fucked-up emotional reasons that were driving me at the time.
But a great therapist, a few really tough learning experiences and a fantastic woman changed all that. I can happily report that all of the silliness and frustration of being single is long, long, gone – and I don’t miss most of it for a second.
But I do miss about a few things about being single; mostly living like an impulsive, neurotic, compulsive slob.
Here, then, are ten things I miss about being single:
Posted on March 30, 2010
By Drew Adamek
I’ll probably never see my best friend again.
We met as third-graders at a church youth group. I hated him at first because he was taller than me, which meant he stood first in line for our Awana team. But it was music nerd love at first sight when he pulled a Run-DMC tape out of his pocket.
We were inseparable for about 15 years. He passed me my first joint. We slept in basements, on couches and in cars together. The night he cried because I was killing myself with drugs and alcohol was the night I decided to get clean. We lived together for so long without ever having girlfriends that my mother was convinced we were a gay couple.
I was the best man at his wedding. I there when his son was born. He stayed at my house the night his marriage fell apart. He sent me the only letters I got while in treatment. He always had an open door for me, no matter what mess I got myself into. He provided me with the stable living environment that I needed to finally get my shit together.
He is in prison for what is, essentially, a life sentence. He confessed to a terrible crime for which he was given a 25-year sentence, without the possibility of parole. He’ll get out of prison eventually, but the best part of his life is gone.
My feelings towards his crime and punishment are complex, confusing and painful. A heartbreaking wave of anger, disappointment and compassion washes over me every time I think about it. Our lives have been so inextricably intertwined for almost 30 years that a part of me feels like I’ve lost the best part of my life too.
I haven’t had the courage to talk to him since he was arrested. I’ve looked up his Department of Corrections photo a hundred times in the years that he’s been gone, looking for some answer to why this all happened, trying to see the things I didn’t see then. But I am a coward; I can’t tell him to his face how I feel about what he did and what it means to me that he is gone.
So here, then, are the things I miss most about my imprisoned best friend:
Posted on March 29, 2010
By Drew Adamek
Arne Duncan’s Clout List got me thinking: Is there a list that I wouldn’t be dumb enough or brave enough to write? The answer is maybe not, but I decided to make a list to find out.
Some lists that I can’t write are obvious; unfortunately for the juvenile part of my brain, the Beachwood has editorial standards. There’s no letting loose with the truly offensive and dumbass lists that rattle around my brain. You’ll never get a bathroom-related list out of me; there won’t be any overtly sexual lists either. And since I am fat, Hispanic and emotionally challenged with a mixed-race family tree, racism, fat-ism, mental health-ism and sexism are out too.
And good thing too; I am happily married, have a professional facade to maintain and, besides, most of the dumb shit I come up with isn’t worth the time it takes to think up. It’s basic and offensive, and I am embarrassed that it takes up space in my enormous head.
But just because I can’t publish these infantile lists, it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
Here, then, are the lists that I can never write:
Posted on March 26, 2010
By Patty Hunter
I found out recently I have an intolerance to gluten. You know, the protein found in wheat, barley and rye. I work at a restaurant that serves food I can no longer consume without health consequences. Well, there’s always the salads, but that’s reserved only for the desperate days. It is amusing to work in a place that is technically hazardous to my health; it makes me feel a bit like a firefighter or divorce lawyer.
We recently had our Christmas party at work. A little late, yes, but it was a kind gesture nonetheless that the general manager found it in the goodness of his heart to give us a party at another location we own and serve food none of us liked. The upside? Bottomless margaritas. Every where we looked, there were pitchers of them and they were never empty. We knew they really wanted to get us drunk when we realized they served nothing else to drink; not even water. Thirsty? Have a margarita. Need to wash down those tasteless appetizers? Have a margarita. Half of the staff blacked out. I was part of the other half and have more than 50 pictures that could serve as sweet blackmail. Ah, the joys of digital cameras and staying just sober enough to remember to document everything. I almost feel bad for the girl who had to watch her boyfriend’s toes get sucked.
Posted on March 25, 2010
By Pat Bataillon
A guitarist lives in my building. He either has recently moved in or built the guts to perform live. Whichever way it is he now sings and strums his guitar in the foyer. Weeks ago I walked by with my headphones and pretended not to notice. Found his music to be plenty good to my ears – though I am no music critic. Must be my regular-fit jeans as well as my regular haircuts.
Again, that was some time ago. It was cold and unpleasant, like every winter in Chicago, and an upbeat tune was a welcome distraction from the dark winter. Now the sun is staying out past four and the guitarist is not as big a deal. With the sun out spirits are generally higher than without. Basically, this person competes with the sun for my gratitude. The sun has been around a lot longer and provides heat, this guy gives me two minutes of Classical Gas as I wait for the elevator. Oddly enough, he is unfazed by my mind’s created competition. He is perfectly content playing his guitar and welcoming tenants home from work.
Posted on March 24, 2010
By J.J. Tindall
Confession to the Future
I strove for wealth and sorely failed,
I did not save a single whale.
I did not raise my children well,
I told my friends to go to hell.
I did not know my neighbor’s name,
I juried love a callow game.
I scorched the earth to fight for fame,
I stole a march on any shame.
Posted on March 23, 2010
By Jeff Huebner
Where Are the Anti-War People? Where Are Their Programs? Two Daleys, Two Wars, Two Pritzker Parks, Two Memorials
In November 1991, a new kind of park was dedicated at the northwest corner of State and Van Buren Streets in the Loop. It occupied the former site of the Rialto, the last SRO or single-room occupancy hotel downtown, which was demolished in fall 1990 after a fire, displacing 20 already luckless down-and-outers.
The hotel was replaced by an artwork, or rather a public-art space, designed by then-Yale University art professor Ronald Jones. Pritzker Park, as it was called (after socialite and Harold Washington Library Center patron Cindy Pritzker), was a project of the nonprofit Sculpture Chicago and the city’s Department of Planning. The visual centerpiece of this “site for the play of the imagination and a haven of green space in the urban environment,” as the plaque put it, was a three-dimensional re-creation of a grove of 13 linden trees and a black granite wall with urns modeled after Rene Magritte’s surrealist painting The Banquet. (It hangs at the Art Institute of Chicago.)
The “oddly different downtown retreat” (according to the Chicago Sun-Times) had other quirky features, most notably its council rings – or circular benches – and plantings in the Prairie style of Jens Jensen, the renowned Chicago landscape architect. One of the rings was also a sandbox for children, and inside was inscribed a quote from 19th-century American poet Henry Abbey, “What do we plant?” It was supposed to remind us that caring for the environment was a personal responsibility.
But that’s not all it was supposed to remind us. As Jones told me in an article for the June 18, 1992 issue of New City, the quote was also meant to echo a phrase that Mayor Richard J. Daley used to mock his critics, including Vietnam War protesters, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention: “These people who come here from other places and cause trouble – Where are their programs? What trees do they plant?”
Posted on March 22, 2010
By Drew Adamek
My brother and I are tight. Except for a weird hallucinogenic drug phase I went through in the 80s, we’ve always been best friends. We grew up in the same room – sharing a bunk bed in a 6-by-6 space, until I was a teenager.
Cramped circumstances like that dictate two choices: 1) become lifelong, inseparable pals or 2) become mortal enemies. We choose option 1.
As adults, getting together with my brother is an absolute teenage boy laugh riot; all dick jokes, goofy innuendos and junk food all the time. We bullshit constantly and never tire of hanging out.
But he absolutely cannot abide one thing that I do: I constantly and incessantly ask him for a bite of whatever he is eating. The most irritating, grating sentence in the world for my brother is, “Hey, lemme get a bite of that.”
I don’t know why I do it; maybe it’s a residual reaction to always sharing as kids, or perhaps it’s an instinctual alpha male domination thing (I am older by four years). He claims I am just too damn cheap to buy my own. Whatever it is that drives me to bogart my brother’s stuff, it drives my brother absolutely batty.
When I die, and he is standing over my grave, he will finally be able to say, “No motherfucker, you cannot have a bite.”
Here, then, are things I have asked my brother for a bite of:
Posted on March 18, 2010
By Drew Adamek
I’ve been poking around the Internet for a new job lately. I’m overwhelmed by the amount of information available. There are pointers and tips available for almost any job seeker, in any position, in any geographic location. Before I am even able to apply for a job, I need to decide if I am a post-industrial worker, in the market for a new media job, or looking for a 100K career (yes, yes and yes).
Sites like Yahoo, MSN and AOL compile my favorite job tip lists. We’ve all seen them; the ten most recession-proof jobs, the ten most in-demand careers, ten jobs for a new economy. I get them on my e-mail home page all the time, and even though I know I shouldn’t, I always click through to them.
I’ve noticed some similarities in this type of list: Looking for a job in the failed housing economy of the Southeast? Become a nurse. Looking for a post-meltdown job on Wall Street? Become a nurse. Want a high tech job in Silicon Valley? Become a nurse.
These lists are helpful in their way, but I don’t want to become a nurse.
Plus, I am a worst-case scenario kind of guy. I am not planning for an economic collapse or another tech bubble; what really worries me is the coming Zombie Apocalypse. An advanced degree in European film studies or Social Media Marketing isn’t going to do me any good when the dead rise from their graves to feed upon the living. Humanity will need people who can build things from scratch, with little or no natural resources, all while running from flesh-eating hordes.
Here, then, are ten jobs for the coming Zombie Apocalypse:
Posted on March 17, 2010
