You CAN Spell "Chicago" Without "WOO! TITS!", But Why Would You Want To? : Pt. I

1. Describe the recent, momentous Feral/'Screw Chicago-thon '07 via a Warren Zevon lyric.

"There ain't much to country livin' / Sweat, piss, jizz and blood."

Okay, okay... so that's the Warren Zevon lyric I use to describe EVERYTHING. It's the Kosher dill of lyrics - salty! Zesty! Penile!

Ahem.

Sweat : a goodly portion was produced whilst shaking our respective booties at the Abbey Pub. That's right. I got down with The Ferality, and you didn't (unless you are Jeff, in which case you did, and didn't it rock? WOO! TITS!). You can party all night long. You can rock it 'til the break of dawn. You can dance until your ass breaks free of its moorings, vacates your pants and slithers off in search of a more sedate host ("Come onnnnnnnnnnnnn, Southern Baptist!").

And yet it will be a mere shadow of the awesomeness with which we rocked out.

Um, "it" meaning your efforts to rock. Not your disembodied ass. Although a disembodied ass is pretty hilarious and awesome, as was the Chicago trip.

Piss : Feral's trip began on a disturbing note, with a fellow Red Line passenger committing an act of public whizzing egregious enough to shock even us. "And I come from Philadelphia, dude," I marvelled, "Public urination is like a form of greeting there."

Jizz : Unless you count "metaphorically jizzing self with excitement over meeting the fantabulous Feral", this was an entirely jizz-less trip. Which - sorry to dash the public's lurid dreams - my trips invariably are. I'm SHY, yo. My inability to think on my feet leads to a definite dearth of time on my back. While in Vegas last year, my homegirl Em's friend Steve regaled us with tales of his vacationary debauchery. "Well, first there was Morty," he reminisced, "... and then Ernesto...". "Well, fuck," said I, "Yet another reason to hate being straight and introverted. While you were sliding down the side of the Luxor pyramid on a trail of Astroglide, I was in my hotel room, gettin' freaky with Chinese takeout and a 'Law & Order' marathon."

Blood : there are those who argue that the best hangover cure is "the hair of the dog that bit you"... e.g. a little early-AM imbibing. But why stop at the hair, I ask? If that puppy is undisciplined enough to bite, BITE IT RIGHT THE FUCK BACK! This is the concept behind Blood Feast!, hangover cure par excellence. Take one extra-spicy Bloody Mary. Add one gargantuan helping of Irish breakfast, featuring the sangui-licious blood sausage. The morning after our Abbey revelry, Blood Feast! proved to be just the thing to soothe our ethanol-ravaged souls. Well, MINE. Feral was slightly squicked out. I don't see WHY... fried hog's blood?... Tabasco-laced vodka?... on top of a queasy tummy and aching head?... ummmn... wait a sec. I think I need some Saltines, yo.

2. Most Feral Activity, Solitary : eating cold deep-dish pizza. In bed. At 11 AM. While naked. And surfing online personals on my Blackberry ("Huh, 'PhilaGuy3478' says he likes 'down-to-earth gals'... I HAVE RED PEPPER FLAKES IN MY NAVEL! THAT DOWN-TO-EARTH ENOUGH FOR YA, BUDDY? Mwa ha ha!").

3. Most Feral Activity, Group : make no mistake, new frontiers WERE blazed in the field of basement alcohol consumption (that'd be consumption of alcohol while chillin' a basement, not consuming alcohol which was BREWED in a basement ["A heady bouquet, with hints of Tide and Parcheesi"]).

However, after admiring the Abbey crowd's inspired (though moronic) opening-act heckling, Feral and I spent the duration of the weekend heckling more or less everything in sight. Bad song on the radio? "FUCKYOU!" Trapped in interminable Chicago traffic? "FUCKYOU!" Disgusting, blood-centric breakfast? "FUCKYOU!"

Heckling a sausage? Now THAT is feral.

4. Least Feral Activity, Solitary : actually FOLDING the towel in my hotel room, rather than [flinging it on the floor/flushing it down the commode/setting it ablaze/twirling it above my head while shrieking, "WOOOOO TITS!"/and displaying said mammiferous protuberances], as well as only using it to mop up water, rather than [marinara sauce/Jim Beam/Skoal-flecked spittle/partially-masticated-worm-flecked tequila/evidence].

5. Least Feral Activity, Group : I've got two words for you: Shoe. Shopping. Cut us a break - we may be hardcore bad-asses (albeit hardcore bad-asses who have memorized the entire Dr. Seuss literary canon), but within each of us still beats the heart of a woman. A woman who requires shoes, goddamn it. I promise to rectify the damage by, oh, I don't know, belching the lyrics to "Baby Got Back" while scraping week-old taco dip off the carpet with a bottle opener shaped like a naked ass and imprinted with the words "BOTTOMS UP!!! KEY WEST 1998".

5. Cutest Thing Discovered Whilst in Illi-nwah... And Quite Possibly Ever : YOU MAY HAVE KNOWN... that the Feral-lings were adorable. BUT DID YOU KNOW... that they refer to Guided By Voices' Robert Pollard as "Bob"? HEE! It is cute enough to make one's heart explode right out of one's pericardial membrane like a grapefruit seed (albeit a gigantic, gory, life-sustaining one).

To Be Continued... We Do Not Buy the Drugs, But We DO Listen To Them; Jesus Fuck, What's With All the Fucking Soy, Do Midwesterners Really Enjoy Their Miso Or Something?; As Melancholy as Elliot Smith, As Hung Over as Paul Westerberg, On a Steve Miller Band-Style Big Ol' Jet Airliner : Goin' Home.