Doesn't happen often, but here's a post that's got nothin' to do with the Cubs.
Anybody drive home yesterday?
In Chicago, I mean.
I was listening to the tail end of Bernstein on The Score, and of course they were joking about the traffic and how awful it was.
And then Dan said something like, "I guess it hasn't been this bad since Valentine's Day, 1990."
Now, I don't remember if it was '90, but I do remember that Valentine's Day snow.
And I'm gonna tell you my story.
But it ends with me crying like a baby, which actually hasn't happened that often.
I had a meeting that day, and I was wearing the kind of clothes a semi-young art director wears to really impress clients.
Let me be more specific.
I spent a shitload of money on a big shouldered Armani suit at Fred Segal's in Hollywood - the whole deal.
Shoes, tie, belt, shirt, and suit.
When I bought it, the woman (and she looked like a movie star) said, "I'm gonna put you in my 5 percent club."
I go, "What does that mean?"
She says, "Every time you come see me, I'll make you 5 percent cooler."
(I never saw her again.)
Okay, so cut to Valentine's Day, 1990.
I have a great meeting, I come back to the agency, they put out a memo saying the weather's supposed to get bad so we can leave at 3.
But I like when the agency gets empty - you can get alot done.
So I stay.
About six I walk outside our building, 3 Illinois Center, wearing the Armani suit under a cheap overcoat.
Not a cab in sight.
It's snowing, but so what, right?
I walk to Michigan and the busses aren't stopping because they're jammed with people.
Okay so that's alarming.
I watch that for about 15 minutes, then decide to walk home (Belmont and just about Lakeshore) thinking I can hail a cab somewhere along the line.
So I walk down Michigan.
I immediately step into a gray puddle that so swallows my foot and new shoe I almost vomit from shock.
The benefit of that is now I am pissed off and this snow can go to hell.
And it does, sort of.
It stops - instead there are tiny ice pellets blowing down my neck at about a hundred MPH.
It's like a hurricane of bb's.
I can literally hear them bouncing off my forehead and my ears and the whites of my eyes.
I give up on the cabs and cut through the park.
I've been walking for maybe 45 minutes.
Long ago I lost any feeling in my feet, and I've jammed my head so far down in the coat that my neck is throbbing.
I lurch into the middle of a street with no cars, I remember seeing the back of some apartments, and suddenly a cab comes along heading the wrong way - towards the city.
I hail.
He stops.
I have maybe 3 blocks to go.
"How much to get to Belmont and the lake?"
"Tventyfive!"
This man was a thief, but I ache so bad I don't even argue.
When I open the back door, an apparition reveals itself to me in the door's window that makes my heart scream.
There's a streetlight across the way casting light on me, and the window's angle is perfect.
I'm staring at me, the Ice Medusa.
My hair is standing straight up.
It's like lumpy upside down icicles sticking up off the top of a blue cartoon head.
I sat in the cab and cried.
Hey, how about that Joey Gathright?
(had to say SOMETHING about the Cubs, right?)
