this was the week that was: 6.30.03

First off, the tattoo.

I did a thing for The Pitch about a tattoo studio. They have a business card with George W. Bush hoisting the devil horns and that, apparently, is enough to warrant notice. It's out in Blue Springs, which might as well be Oklahoma, for all it really matters. The exit sign mentions Blue Springs as well as Lake Latawana. This should give you some idea. I drive out there, meet the guy--Denny Duvenci-- who runs the place, who immediately strikes me as the antithesis of most every flaky tattoo artist I've run into, either on the business end of a needle or just everyday meet and greets. We talk, smoke, I show him the knifebrain and he says, "If you don't slam me, I'll cut you a good deal on the price."

I already have a gift certificate for 100 bucks worth of tattoo from someplace called Uncle Russel's that I won at a screening of Memento out in White Haven (which involved me singing the signature line from 'Evita' up against two 18 year old girls--the less said, the better) but winning a tattoo from a big greasy beardo in a movie theatre doesn't exactly inspire confidence. So after talking to Denny, I run off, write the article, watch it get butchered by the main editor and wait for my check.

So I head down there Sunday and no one's home. Same thing Monday. Tuesday, I stumble on the idea of actually calling and then head down. When I show up, Denny is smoking out back with two other guys--one with a very fresh and wet tattoo running down his arm. I show Denny the design and he says, "You eaten yet?" I reply in the negative, he tells me to go eat and come back in an hour and he'll set me up. Mind you, I wasn't even planning on getting the ink that day. So I tool around Blue Springs for awhile, a town that seems to solely consist of a stretch of two-lane bordered by businesses like The Booze Hut and the Hair Shanty. I come back, wait a few minutes and I'm in the chair.

Two hours pass remarkably quickly under the needle. We talk about Chicago, music, politics, books. It's amazing just how good an experience it is. The last two tats I got were administered by silent fuckers, whose minds seemed to be as much on what they were gonna have for dinner as the needle ramming in and out of my forearms at hummingbird speed. He finishes, I check it out, aghast again÷this time by how good a job it is÷and then he sends me on my way.

"Don't I owe you something?"

"Nope. You wrote that article."

And that was that. I tipped all the money I had on me and sped home with Good Old Boys on the iPod and a rapidly diminishing supply of cigarettes.

Otherwise, it's been workaday and lazy weekends. Work is turning odd, suddenly everyone's excitable about upping our number of newspaper clients to 100 by year's end÷a figure that it'd be generous to say is retarded. Since I'm not the team player of the bunch, I doodle through the constant meetings, nod when I'm meant to and ache to get back to work. I like my job, really, it's just the baggage of politicking and everything else that doesn't fall under the heading of work that gets to me.

In the face of all that, I've started bringing stuff from home with me. I've been hammering out a rewrite of The Twelve. It's almost in good enough shape to consider letting it make the rounds. Another bout or three of narrative self-flagellation and all should be good to go. Cruel Biology has fallen by the wayside for a bit, but it's been in stasis so long, it probably doesn't notice the difference. I've made a personal vow to finish a first draft of The Horrible Spaces by summer's end, which requires I jam a live wire in my brain and get to work. Same should be said of the collaboration thing with Vinny.

I've decided to try and keep this function of the blog going, if only to have reminders writ large of what I need to do. I bought a whiteboard for this same reason, but the kitchen walls seem to have a grudge against the hammer and nails.

Otherwise, everything else seems to be calm. No one dead, no one sick, nothing broken and everyone speaks english. My birthday is now 5 days away, so feel free to pick me up something to celebrate my perpetual cellular degneration and memory fog.

Posted by xtop at June 30, 2003 11:58 PM