The Locker (6)

One hundred years ago, where you’re standing was more a frontier than a county. The Golden Gate Bridge hadn’t been built yet. Folks still got around on horses. Once a swamp, Chicago had already been drained and laid over with clay bricks that one could still find if he knew where to look. You recall your grandfather telling you about the horse drawn ice truck he worked on, every morning before dawn the sound of hooves clapping over those clay bricks, delivering sawn blocks of Lake Michigan to restaurants and saloons.

Grandpa Jack almost made it to 100. As far as you know he’d been happy through most of it. He liked watching sports on TV (the Bears and the White Sox but never the Cubs), and, in his last years, riding the senior bus to the casinos where he played the slots and bet on the ponies.

As a child, you saw your grandparents periodically, when they were your age now. But you didn’t really know them. Their lives were like dusty books you had no interest in reading. Maybe you’d picked up on your father’s ambivalence to them or, more likely, you were simply too preoccupied with yourself. By the time you became a teen-ager, the last thing you wanted to do was drive out and see them. This would not change, even after siring your own children. Schlepping the kids 40 miles only to watch them squirm seemed like torture. Begrudgingly, you did it, but it was like checking a box. Hit the early bird buffet and have your family back in the city before nightfall. ______’s attitude was better but even she came to view it as an obligation. Your daughters never had a chance. The chain of indifference perpetuated. You marvel how anyone could truly adore his or her elders. Stuns you whenever you hear someone say his or her best friend was grandpa or grandma. Such a different experience than yours, sometimes you think those people were lying.

To be continued…

Calling out GQ magazine on some double-pleated shite.

Yeah, these two are the problem.

So, I picked up the latest issue of GQ to read on the plane. I like looking at all the cool shit men can own, wear and do. Provided you’re super f-cking rich. (More on that later.) Anyway, I get to this piece, “The Least Influential People of 2014” and topping the list, at Numero Uno, is “Bono and U2.” The editors were leveling some serious hate on the Irish band because they “strong-armed” their “dad-rock” into your iTunes “without your consent.” For those unawares, U2 released their new album, Songs of Innocence for free. The magazine called it a piece of “direct mail.”

Oh, the indignity!

A little history: Apple and U2 go back ten years in a relationship that helped launch the iPod as well as taking the iTunes platform to a whole ‘nutha level. Remember those iconic commercials in 2004, featuring the band’s hit, Vertigo? Nobody complained.

But that was then. If ever there was proof ‘no good deed goes unpunished’ this latest U2/Apple collaboration is it. Were U2 & Apple presumptuous in their noble deed? Maybe even pretentious? Probably.

But so is GQ. Frankly, GQ has been on a vanity trip as long as Bono has. And as for being “least influential” what exactly has GQ given us, other than inferiority complexes? Who among the working class can even buy anything in GQ? A pair of boots for two grand? A watch for 24k. Give me a f–cking break. “Dad-rock?” Who else besides movie stars and trust-fund babies can afford any of the shit from GQ magazine? That’s right. Dads. And only a small handful of those at that. Hating on a 50-yr-old do-gooder like Bono for giving his work away reeks of annoying millennial hipsterism if not downright hypocrisy.

Speaking of which, in GQ’s advice section, The Style Guy an editor criticizes wearing sweat clothes outside of the gym, blithely suggesting they are “worn by oversize bouncers, bodyguards and repo men in the hip hop industry.” Fair enough. And classist. Yet, on page 34 they show a dude wearing sweatpants ($320!) with a sweater ($400), shirt ($350) and jacket costing one grand. Later, “GQ’s exclusive advertising section” pays tribute to the winner of Express’s Back2Business contest, Nick Taranto. Dude is wearing sweats pants. He is not in a gym. Nick is drinking coffee in someone’s loft. There are other sweats-wearing people in this issue, both advertorial and editorial.

They’re fancy but they’re sweats.

GQ, I’m calling bullshit on your double standards. What’s worse than a man purse? A douche bag.

Final Note: After Bono, GQ chose Barack Obama as the second “least influential person of 2014.” Both men appear before Donald Sterling. Which makes sense, I suppose, if you’re a douche bag.