09-14-01

Four very weird and symbolic things happened to me tonight that are connected to the suicide bombings. We went to see a play tonight in which our friend Seth performs. The show is called Nerdography at Live Bait theater; it's a late night show starting at 11pm, and it's totally hilarious. Highly recommended. It's only running a couple more weeks so check it out. My friend Seth & his wife do a nerdrock-indierock performance of the theme song to a GI Joe movie. The rest of the show is great, too. Anyway, we're standing on Clark waiting for the northbound 22 bus when this guy comes out of nowhere and hands us a flier saying "Gathering in the name of peace." The piece of paper he handed me had weirdly asyncopated lines probably drawn with a ruler and a marker. In messy handwriting the paper read:

A Gathering In The Name of Peace

Saturday September 15th 2001
Lawn in Front of Lane Tech High Addison & Western
Noon - Dusk (double underline under Dusk)

Gathering Called By
Gary Steven Foster (with a partially scribbled over letter S)

So, this is some undefined meeting for peace called by some guy named Gary. And we're supposed to go there. That's just weird.

We stopped at the Pick-Me-Up Café to pass some time before the show, and the Onion has a fake horoscope entry written before the bombing which creepily reads: Aries (March 21 - April 19) You will receive frightening news regarding the U.N.'s Council For The Prevention Of Nuclear Terrorism. For one thing, it doesn't exist.

On the bus ride to the theater, we saw something else weird, but it was unconnected to the "War." This guy with a bizarrely flexible face kept blowing up his cheeks really big until it actually pushed up by almost 1 inch his pudgy, pock marked, Karl Malden nose. Then his face would sag until it was almost convex. He also picked his nose and ate it. I kid you not.

Next, when we got off the bus and walked a block to the theater I saw a car with a big American flag on the window sitting right next to a graveyard. Creepier.

Then, after the show I saw a billboard sign for Singapore Airlines with a big headline reading "Welcome to A Whole New Sky." Triple creepy.

After the show this woman who was friends of some friends of mine told this story about her apartment in Wicker Park (for those who don't know Wicker Park - some parts are still hipsterville, many are yuppified and some are also kind of dangerous with gangs). Some drug dealers have been selling drugs on her back porch. And what's particularly weird is that these street dealers are selling drugs to yuppies - guys in Izods wearing khaki pants. She has to scream at them sometimes to get them off her back yard. One day she called the cops when this guy was selling in her backyard, and the cops took forever to get to her apartment; she had to call them twice. Finally, they showed up, took a look around, and declared "There's nothing there. Nothing we can do." She said, "Don't you care that drug dealers are selling on my back porch almost every night of the week?" And the cop replied, "What do you expect? It's the city."

Eventually she became acquainted with a drug dealer, and he told her that he cuts the drugs with ground up Doan's pills. So it'll make people feel fucked up even if the drugs aren't very strong. That's some weird shit.

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