Tag Archives: weirdodujour

Diner Angel

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I frequented the Hollywood Grill a great deal in my early days of Chicago living. It was the closest 24-hour anything to my first apartment, offering respite after weekend house shows and late night exploration of abandoned churches. My dopey pals and I would make the long walk over on humid nights to chug coffee, shoot the little cups of creamer, and lick sugar off our hands. Ridiculous but clean wholesome fun compared to the other things I was doing before moving to the city. Always the caffeinated stop before a night of stealing street signs or crawling up under the bascule bridge on Ashland and Clybourn. Other adventures at this diner involved almost getting beat up by a 77 named Uno, and when I started drinking heavily there were a few times I’d use my plate of hash browns as a pillow. For some reason the management never thought ill enough to toss me out, I’m sure they’d seen much worse.

Last night, I had somewhere to be after work. The day had been challenging enough that I needed somewhere to sit down and collect myself before facing the next swarm of people. Hollywood was the closest location that promised solitude, carbs, and caffeine so I walked up the block and fell into an empty booth. It had been years since I set foot in the place and it was still a chincy timewarp of faux Hollywood memorabilia. Maybe a few new paintings of the 3 Stooges mingling with Marilyn, James and Groucho…but for the most part, 25 years had passed and Hollywood Grill hadn’t even blinked.

Business was slow enough on a late Sunday afternoon that at least 3 staff members checked on me before my designated server could give me a menu. And when he did he slumped down in the booth across from me and let out and exhausted, “gorl!”

He had a black ponytail and some Anton LaVey looking facial hair, crooked teeth that were actually becoming, and an upside down dangling cross earring. On his neck was a faded kiss print tattoo that I kept staring at because the shape of the lips didn’t look right. He was young, looked like a hard 28 or so but what do I know about age? Nobody looks like themselves, anymore. He interrupted me while taking my order to follow a train of thought, “Wait, how old did you say you were? You look so young.”

I wasn’t sure if his conversations with customers were all blending together or he was carrying on some dialog in his head with me. I had never mentioned my age, I was just trying to order some food. I don’t know why people ask this stuff and answered him with the same question I always give when someone has got to bring age up.

“How old do I look?”

It’s awkward enough to get subjects changed real quick–most of the time.

“I wouldn’t place youuuu…a day over 42.” He responded.

“Good guess.” There was a brief pause as we looked at each other. Social scripts say I was supposed to fill in the blank with an actual response but instead I put my order in. “Can I get a plate of cheese fries with a side of bacon? And a bloody mary?” I never realized Hollywood Grill served booze.

My server was attentive, maybe too much so. Checking in on me every 5 to 6 minutes, when I just wanted some peace to write at the booth and inhale my dinner, starving coyote style. Each time he’d slump across from me in the booth, and call me “friend” or “gorl”.

I had overheard him talking to a table of ladies and tell one of them, “you’re too pretty to be sad…”

Get those tips, sug. I thought to myself.

Then he’d return to me and sigh, “Gorl, this day is going to kill me.”

Suddenly I found myself offering moral boosts to my server, “It’ll get better, hon.”

He’d take his glasses off, toss them on the table dramatically and ask, “you promise?”

He offered me the tea among the staff and I took the bait. Sometimes folks just need to be heard. He told me the overnight waitress in her 70s complained to the owners about the quality of his side work and fuck that old bitch anyway, she had a swastika tattoo on her back and why are you serving in your 70s? What’s the retirement plan, Marge? I was greatly amused by all this sassiness and he kept refilling my bloodymary as he dished the dirt.

It was getting to be about that time when my server slipped me a ten dollar bill and asked if I’d be his bestie forever and run down to the liquor store and get him something. I asked what he likes, fully knowing in my mind he was going to say Fireball.

“Fireball”.

Right on the money.

I paid my check, realizing half my order had been comped and he whispered, “don’t tip me”.

Well there you have it, I officially had a side mission. So I did as I was asked, walking down two blocks and buying a 4 pack of Fireball shooters. I wrapped them and the change up in it’s black plastic bag and walked back to the diner. Debating how I was going to hand these off to the server in the most discreet way. Don’t want to get your new bestie fired. Maybe I could claim I had left my card inside or use the restroom? Just as I approached Hollywood Grill, there he was in the back smoking a cigarette.

“Oh my god you are an angel!” He exclaimed while tucking the package inside his apron. “Come back and see me again, or look me up on Instagram!”

He hugged me and told me he loved me a few times. Funny how free and easy people can be with that phrase. I waved goodbye and walked down the road to the second part of my night, realizing we never even exchanged names.

Ornery Cuss After Dark

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After a couple rye & sodas, I had the pleasure of yapping about my life of art and zines with Dmitry Samarov on hu u no. If you’re interested in listening to a variety of silly voices and over the top swearing, this is for you.

A few weeks prior, I appeared on Let’s Take a Moment with Billy McCall and Liz Mason to talk about the zine, Secret Picnic Spot.

Restock on Weirdo Du Jour, Ornery Cuss, and Cathode Ray Mission 1-3 over on etsy. But of course, if you just email me about purchasing a copy, you can get it a lot cheaper. weirdodujour@proton.me

Tugging on the Underbelly’s Apron Strings

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A handful of years ago, I was working the morning shift as a kitchen grunt in a little roadside eatery. That’s where I learned about the underbelly deals that are part of the restaurant business. Work would start at 4am, and it would be the lead cook, myself on prep, and a dishwasher. The three of us making dick jokes and banging pots and pans together like cymbal monkeys before the sun rose and all the deliveries would arrive. The restaurant owner would roll in around 10, look over receipts, and have a meltdown about the prices, especially in the slow season. Restaurant depot, linens, bread, produce…it would hit the fan. Holler and a’shout about hemorrhaging money, and sometimes in the most frenzied tantrums, equipment would get tossed around the kitchen. One time, a knife was chucked at my head for accepting a pallet of eggs that had increased in price by a dollar. All the knives were dull because we hadn’t sent them out for a sharpening service to save a buck after the holidays. Yet it was thrown with enough force to stick in the wall, a foot from my face. The cook rushed me out the door. Sending me down the street for a pack of cigarettes to calm things down and clear the kitchen out without my safety being on the line.


Linen prices always go up in the winter because of rugs catching the slush from foot traffic, so our rag consumption had to go down. Somehow, the cook had figured out a deal with our linen delivery guy.  Talked the fella into fudging some numbers and hooking us up with a couple extra bags of rags and aprons in exchange for 6 Vicodin. The cook was pretty run down physically, as a cook in their late 50’s is bound to be, and the VA would over prescribe painkillers. A means of shutting up old vets with aches and pains. So our cook developed a habit of using his surplus of opioids to negotiate deals with certain individuals that lived on the seamy side of life. The linen guy was what you’d consider “squirrelly.” Lanky with a pocked complexion and 5-mile stare that’s associated with long periods of incarceration. I had made a point not to find myself alone in the dining room with him. He’d get so excited about his exchanges with the cook and sometimes ask for cigarettes, too. Often, I wondered if he was eating his handful of pills and cruising the streets in his linen van, higher than a kite.
 
Then there was the bakery delivery. Bread prices went up at the beginning of every year. Same company. Same practice. The delivery driver on our route was a pudgy man with crooked teeth. He had a wife and grown kids and just so happened to have a little crush on the cook. I watched the two of them flirt endlessly, twice a week for months and months. When the owner hit the ceiling about bread prices one January, the bread truck started coming more often. But not always with bread for our restaurant. The delivery man would pull into the back alley, shut his lights off, and just sit there. The cook would take his apron off and tell me to go up front and keep an eye on things while he’d disappear out the back door with no coat on. Sometimes, the dishwasher and I would stand at the back door and watch him stroll through the snow and get into the truck, where he’d stay from 20 minutes to half an hour. After a bit, he’d come back inside with a dreamy grin on his face and light up a cigarette inside the kitchen. He’d lean like a smitten school girl on the prep table, puffing away on his menthol 100 with a certain glow to his face.
“He’s bringing an extra rack of rye bread next week. I want to run a Reuben special on the weekend.”

When an actual bread delivery would happen, the driver and the cook would make eyes at one another, giggle, and once I watched the cook pinch the driver’s butt. Up until that point, I didn’t really know what was going on as I was young and simple, just starting my kitchen sentence. Once I figured it out and asked the cook about it, he told me to keep my mouth shut because it was the one thing sparing me from being a human butcher block when the knives started flying.

I took note of his warning and never said anything about his deals of pills and sex, until now… with this story.

American Library Association Conference and Expo

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I had an amazing time at the ALA Convention as part of the Zine Pavilion. I want to thank everyone that stopped by my table and kept me busy slinging zines on Friday and Saturday. Met a lot of amazing people, so many complex minds to pick about literature and DIY culture. Plus I loved talking horror and sci-fi with the “real ones”.

This website has gotten a bit of an update. Now there’s a full section dedicated to zines and where to locate a copy for yourself. There’s also a new zine reading video uploaded to my YT page.