I’ve seen this movie at least ten times.
If you haven’t seen Vanilla Sky, it goes a little something like this: Guy has perfect life–girls, glam, cash, and owns a successful magazine left to him by his crappy father. He sleeps with hot girls and has great parties. Everyday is a fun day. Until he meets the love of his life. He has this fantastic night with her and they stay up all night talking and watching t.v. and then a horrible accident happens and his life changes and he doesn’t know what is real and where his life is going and it’s so good because it’s Cameron Crowe and it has a soundtrack and it has these fantastic one liners like: “I will tell you later… in another life… when we are both cats.” or “Look at us. I’m frozen. You’re dead… it’s a problem.” And some of the scenes will blow your mother fing mind. I mean, there is this one where they’re in a dance club and the laser lights and the camera angle and the soundtrack and the people and it feels like I am there dancing at my favorite place and I want to just be them and I just want to be these characters and… and…
OK. See. I’ve seen this movie. A lot. But for some reason… this time was different.
You know how you can watch a movie or hear a song or read a book three or four or seven times and each experience can be the same? You enjoy it. It fulfills you. You go on with your life… unless something has happened in your life… and has changed the way you see…well, everything.
Then you hear that song or read that book or see that movie again and because you have changed and your perspectives have changed… the movie has changed. The scene that you never really got before totally makes sense. Or… or your empathy for a character, empathy that you never had for them, is there and you see it through their eyes and it’s like the movie is brand new and better and something feels different… you feel different… you feel like you get some things… you feel wiser.
This is why I am a writer.
I believe that the things we do and the things we show others and the things we create and the way we perceive things make us better. See, it might not make us better the first time we see something or read something or hear something, but nothing ever comes that easy.
There are things in life we are not ready for. There are some scenes that we keep reliving over and over. There are some dialogs that we hear on repeat, but it is not until that moment where we are the wiser and that life experience has gained up on us where those scenes and dialogs and our lives start coming together… start making sense.
And like a movie you fall in love with all over again… you can start falling in love with your own life. And that is a damn good ending to any story… Hollywood’s or your own.

A couple on the bus:
Guy: “Oh my GOD, it’s so COLD!”
Girl: “Yup. It is.”
Guy: “What’s your problem?”
Girl: “Nothing…”(She says this in the way there is so something wrong, but not admitting).
Guy: “Um, OK… GOD, I think my brain is frozen.”
Girl: (Mumbles) “I think your heart is frozen.”
Me: (To myself) “I’m totally going to use that.”

They say penguins huddle together to keep warm and rotate positions so each penguin gets a turn in the warm center of the group. Polar bears have stiff hairs that insulate and create traction on the ice and cold and tend not to leave their mates during birthing season. And in the Tundra, the coldest climate on Earth, the wind causes what plant life that can survive in the conditions to hold on to the stones and rock that surround the terrain.
We hide.
For twenty -five years I grew up in this. The temperatures that even make touching window glass painful are so easy to forget in those months where we sweat and die for air conditioning. You would think it would get easier. You would think putting on layers and covering your ears and watery eyes would be something you prepare for like Christmas or your birthday or tax season. But it never gets easy. Never.
Right now the hum of my steam heat reminds me of how quiet the cold can be too. People stay under covers and have fires in their fireplaces. Car honks are minimal and crowds of people who don’t mind walking a few blocks to restaurants and bars drink at home or risk a cab ride. It’s silent.
I think we have it all wrong. Like penguins or polar bears or even the moss that grows on rocks, we should totally depend on each other when it gets this cold. We should say: “Yo, let’s huddle. Let’s hug and stay warm!” Not that waiting for the bus would be all that pleasant if say some dude walked up to me and started huddling me to make sure I didn’t freeze before the 146 bus made it to our stop. But the idea is nice. Or maybe the city in the cold is too scary for me.
I’ll admit it. It’s too quiet. Because, yes, I grew up with the cold but I always had a full house to snuggle in. My parents would order pizza(because it’s never too rude to make a pizza guy go out in the weather!) and we would all grab blankets and fall asleep watching bad movies on the USA Network. And now, well, it’s not like that. My apartment doesn’t have a fire place and I don’t have cable and I don’t have a house full of people… or anyone else to cling to under the blankets… like I used to. It’s just me. Sometimes that makes it even colder.
It’s funny how the warmest thing can be the memories of the good in the coldest times.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ONLINE AT UGO.COM 8/2006
Go here for original content.
Gee whiz! Finally, Las Vegas brings the country a little something other than watered down drinks, mass-consumed buffets, and a creepy over-worshiped Celine Dion. Da da daaaaa, bring in The Killers, a retro-like ’80s rock band with beguiling lyrics demonstrating for everyone “the bright side” of that desert hugging city. Mr. Brightside himself, Brandon Flowers led the group out of the desert and to the city near the water with their recent concert at Lollapalooza in Chicago.
Hot Fuss, the band’s first record, was just that – a whole bunch of fuss about a hip, sexed-up band. The lads behind the instruments backed it up live, booming out a powerful set on a powerful hot Chicago Sunday. With recent, persistently played hits “Somebody Told Me”, “I’m Mr. Brightside”, and “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine” so finely performed, you’d think the Killers had played a million gazillion concerts. If you’ve been dwelling in a soundproof bunker without a radio, you’d be the only one not to recognize the thick, almost dance-trackable beats The Killers offer with fist-punching drum forms alongside catchy rips on the electric guitar. But, live, the band could have made a sneeze track sound hotter than a Richard Simmon’s workout extravaganza.
Not only was the audience engaged in these hits gone wild, Flowers, complete with Mary Kay eyeliner, held his bouncy stage presence well. His bandmates, too, made the stage seem like a basement house party with energetic, perfect backup vocals with a pristine sound that only a capable band could regurgitate outside of safe and sound studio mechanics. By allowing the beer-fed, sweaty crowd join in to their gentle lyrics without that cheesy singy-songy annoying thing that people like, a-hem, Dashboard Confessional, do (we pay to see the band, not the audience screech), there was a taste of their killer victory – the victory of impending mega-fame.
The Killers clearly know how to do their job selling themselves as a here-to-stay prickly pop sensation gone live who a) can sing b) can really sing c) pull off a show without smearing one tad bit of eye make up in the humid, hot heat of their successful – and well worth the fuss – act.

I totally dig breathing.
It’s this thing that I’ve been doing since, oh you know, I was born. It’s this really super cool thing that involves sucking air in to my body and then letting it out when I am done using it. Apparently it keeps me alive and makes me have energy and gets my brain working and my blood pumping and all that good stuff. I dig that. I really do.
I get habits, too.
There was this one period in my life where I would come home and watch four hours of Saved By The Bell on that channel, TBS. You know, the channel that has that wacky show time thing like: 8:05am to 8:35am Saved By The Bell will play… they don’t round it to normal hours of the clock.. they love that five minute deal. Anyway, I had the habit for a good semester or two of high school to come home and do my homework in front of four hours of that show reciting every line… even if I saw the episode the day before. It was a habit.
But it didn’t kill others.
You know where I’m going with this. Yeah. If you don’t know, you can’t smoke in Chicago. Finally. Thank God. Now, I’m not going to get on my whole social high horse of why I think this is fantastic(because I don’t smell like crap when I leave a bar because I don’t have to hold my breath when I am dancing at Berlin because I don’t have to worry about absorbing all the stuff other people enjoy absorbing because other people are absorbing it at choice). I’m not a judger. I’m just not.
But, I love it. And I don’t just love it because I don’t have to smell it. I love it because it’s like we are finally on the right track. It’s like we finally get it as people.
I was born when smoking was still as popular as 80′s synthesized beats. I remember people smoking all over the place… including people in my family. And I used to think it was so fricken cool. Those awesome white sticks dangling out of mouths. You got to carry a lighter wherever you went. You got to blow out smoke from your nose like a dragon. There was nothing cooler than that. Being a dragon, that is.
But then we lost a family member to it. And then there was the realization that being a dragon wasn’t as cool as staying alive. And it was when I saw that ad back in the mid 80′s where they were all: “Would you give a cigarette to your unborn baby…” and a picture of a fetus totally lighting up where I got that sometimes we are all still idiots.
We still shoot at each other with guns when we disagree. We still eat ourselves in to death. We still sleep with people without using protection. We still keep on making the mistakes that we should totally be learning from.
So, this whole no smoking in public places in Illinois is making it easier to breathe… and the scent that we are breathing in is no longer tar, but maybe it’s optimism. Maybe this is a new step for us as people or at least respect for ourselves. Maybe it’s just good to know that we might not be able to end a pointless war or stop people from getting sick from having sex… but we can take it piece by piece… or puff by puff.
Or maybe it’s just nice to know that we can take a deep breath without choking on our mistakes.

I’m pretty sensitive.
I think this is well known by many. But I’m going to put it out there just in case.
So, being sensitive. It comes with a lot to deal with. You know, a lot. There’s the whole “I’m trying to figure out what it all means!” feeling and then there’s the whole “Am I overreacting to what just happened or is he or she an asshole and I’m totally at right to react the way I am reacting?” feeling. And then there is the whole ” Let’s be all melo-dramatic Grey’s Anatomy-like” thing. You know, this involves music and metaphors and pauses and all that fun stuff.
But, it’s sort of part our jobs to figure out this stuff going on all around us. If we all just sat around watching T.V. and eating ice cream in one sittings we wouldn’t know that there was gravity and we wouldn’t know that we could go in to outer space and we wouldn’t know that you could totally spell “boobless” on your calculator if you turn it upside down(AWESOME since fifth grade!).
And some of us are just a little more sensitive when it comes to figuring this stuff out. Especially when it comes to relationships.
I keep everything. Not in a creepy ” I can’t get rid of that tin can because we made our last dinner together with that tin can” kind of way. But I like ticket stubs and I like Polaroids and I like receipts and bowling score sheets and photobooth strips and playbooks. These things are what us sensitive people use to go back to. We use it to remind us that something existed. We use it to sigh and laugh at and to get mad at and then get frustrated at and then get heated at and then… and then…
we shove it all back in to a box and hide it under the bed next to the stuff you wouldn’t want your mom to find.
And I thought this was normal. I thought this is what everyone does. And then I found this:


And for a second I stared at it. I stared it like how you stare through a store front window at something you didn’t know you wanted until you saw it right there at that moment in the window.
These bags… these bags… make sense:

Because having boxes of things from the past sometimes isn’t the right way to approach where you are trying to go in to the future. All the reminders of things that were right that went wrong… eh, there’s a better way to use space.
Sure, we should totally keep the good stuff. And if the time together ended well, then you should save all the things that mean something to you. But when there are bags like these and there are melo-dramatic ways to approach it… well, sometimes it’s fun to see your past go up in flames. Usually, once the smoke clears, it’s much easier to assess the damage and start making room for the new.

Like most everyone, I made a list for 2008.
You know, “The List”. Things you want to get better at or accomplish or finish or start or lose or gain or ignore or pay attention to. The things that, for whatever reason through out the other part of the year, you feel will be better started at the beginning of the new one. And let’s not forget Oprah’s big find of 2007, The Secret! Where you write down things you want to accomplish and the phsyical-ness of it makes the world start making it happen or some shit like that.
So, I’ve seen other people’s lists. Theirs involve things like:
Go back to grad school
Get a dog
Get a car
Own a home…
Those are great. Good goals. Go for it. Yeah!
But I decided to get a little more inventive with mine… and it ended up being a few pages…
Things that are on my list:
Ride in an air balloon
Ride all the trains in Chicago(Pink and Yellow to go!)
See a show at the planetarium
Host a travel show
Get a piece published in a popular publication
Go a week without texting(HA!)
Write more letters… to people who live close and far
See that giant dinosaur in the desert
Go to New Mexico
Go to another continent I haven’t been on
Fill three Moleskin notebooks
And the list goes on and on.
But the one that I am working on today is:
Write a letter/essay/piece to my future kids about the lessons from their dad.
See, lately I have been scaring myself about how much I want kids and what that would mean for me and how that would happen. But what I’ve realized is that one day I will be a freaking awesome dad with stories… so many stories that these kids are going to laugh at or get sad at or get scared at or not hear until they are older and drunk and I am slightly senile and they don’t know whether to believe me or chalk it up to me being a writer.
But this letter, it’s the stuff I am learning now. Not: “You should always start a savings account because you never know when you’re going to need it.” It’s more like: ” You may break up with someone that you’ve lived with for years and have to move out. You will need friends. Good friends. Get those friends and have them help you pack those boxes to get you out of that house so you are somewhere new and not regretting… and this is OK… making these mistakes. It’s awesome. It means you know what you want…”
And my kids will read this and totally know that their dad wasn’t, well, whoever I will be as their dad when they are around.
Because that’s what these lists are for, right? They are to make us better people. They are to remind us we aren’t just supposed to get up in the morning and take every second like it’s always going to be there. The lists are to make us see that we’ve got more to offer and we just need to stop watching reruns of Samantha Who to realize that.
On the list: Watch more reruns of the four episodes of Samantha Who

“Have a good one, Big Guy.”
So, lately, people have been calling me “Big Guy”. I didn’t really think anything of it until I heard it the fourth time at the health food store I was buying a salad at.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking… “So? What’s the big deal? “Big Guy”. People say it all the time.”
And that’s fine to think that… especially when you’re tall. Being tall and hearing “Big Guy” is like saying: “Have a good day, sir.” When you’re a male. It’s just how it goes. But when you are, um, vertically challenged, “Big Guy”, has a different meaning.
Now, I’m not that short. If you’ve met me, you’d agree. But I’m not tall either. I’m five foot seven. I really have never been sensitive about this either… until someone actually called me short while in line at a concert. The dude that called me short was a jerk and isn’t worth the story, but when I realized that five foot seven isn’t really that common for most Midwestern guys, I started thinking… is that what everyone thinks.
Plus, “Big Guy” is like a phrase you use for a little kid that did something really cute and is proud of it and wants to be talked to like he’s all special and stuff. You know, “Good job eating all your peas, Big Guy!” or “Wow! You finger painted that all by yourself? Good going Big Guy!” but when you are paying for salad or getting a latte or holding a door open for someone or even returning a t-shirt… you are not really doing anything deserving a “Way to go, Big Guy!” kind of compliment. So, that sort of “Big Guy” doesn’t work.
What I’m saying is, well, I’ve just noticed people calling me “Big Guy” lately and I just wanted to know–since I don’t have cable–if that is a phrase that is being commonly used on some new hit show. Like, “Boo” or “My Bitch” or “Maam” or “Lova”.
Or if I should just assume I’m getting a belly and that’s the sort of “Big” they are relating to. Because if that’s it, then you know, we don’t need to be talking about the fact that people have been calling me “Big Guy” and we can pretend that this has never existed. Cool. Yup. Totally.