(I started writing this a while ago, but then I sold all of the jokes to gypsies, so now I must furnish the entry with new ones.)

An old friend of mine won an Oscar recently, which is excellent, and much like the crafty Ms. Passion, I had an influx of traffic on this here website due to a link on said friend's old blog. Given the, uh, adult nature of the traffic, I am feeling a certain amount of pressure to adopt an intriguing pseudonym like "Lorenzo from Accounting" or "Lunch", and posit scenarios which might better fit the expectations of these new visitors.

I never thought it would happen to me! Despite his incorrect and shameful choice of headgear, the professional affiliation of great service toward our corporation was overwhelming! Together, we searched very much to achieve bare financial milestones established with great knowing by the regional management for whom effortless brilliance of leadership and strategy is infinitely disappointed by our meager abilities and profound inadequacy. But yet we both felt great seriousness toward our professional responsibilities!

There is an article coming in a local newspaper about the travel book, so I am looking forward to that. In the March edition, upon much consideration, we decided to change "Birdgeport" to "Bridgeport" on the map for that part of the city. One bar on the south side closed, so that came out, and a Neapolitan pizza place on the north side went in. But we haven't done anything about the somewhat daffy computer-generated index, which has to be seen to be appreciated.

Reports have it that Cheeta was featured on Episode 350 of This American Life. I haven't listened yet, but I am always excited for the old fellow to get some of the recognition he so richly deserves. His masterwork "Green, Brown, Yellow" recently had its first formal exhibition in my living room during a party, and I think everyone was very impressed. (I should note that I had it framed at The Practical Angle in Chicago and they did a fine job.)

I never thought it would happen to me! I was just sitting there on the mountain, on the lookout for peanuts or old fruit, when...

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It is not entirely accurate to say that I have been up to my old tricks, for among the tricks were new ones, such as the publication of a goddam book. I have never done that before, and now that my author copies have arrived, it is delightful to see words that I have written in print. The book is a travel guide to the entire city of Chicago; I covered the north side and most of the west, and shared duties on the center of town. It was written with another fellow whose talents complemented my own, under contract to a publisher overseas. The idea was for us to write a book, and then post more or less the entire thing online for people to collaborate upon in wiki-form; whereupon we, as editors, will incorporate any quality submissions received into the text of the book, which is printed on demand whenever someone orders it, ensuring that it is ruthlessly current.

The publishers received some coverage on the blogs last week, most notably on boingboing, where a commenter named JOE had this to say:

"Their Chicago guide is 468 pages? That's not a travel guide, that's a travel novel. You'd spend the majority of your trip reading the beast."

Damn right! Thanks, guy.

So that's what I did with the latter half of 2007, and also the first month of 2008. It was a lot of work, but I am pleased with the finished product. I did rather a lot of writing, of course, and plenty of walking around to find things and telephone calls to confirm other things; two of my photos adorn the cover, and there are a few more scattered throughout the book in black and white. Rogers Park receives an entire chapter, and although travel literature is a form simply not equipped to capture the sweet, savage nature of the old stomping grounds, I did enjoy the chance to write about my ancestral land in guidebook form.

You can buy a copy of my book here; and I leave you with that.

(Obviously, I haven't written an entry for quite a long time. Both my day job and the aforementioned travel guide require sentences that do not wander too far into the labyrinth of alarm and excitement and halfway state that is the mark of my usual prose, so it is kind of enjoyable to stretch out with all of these clauses.)

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Certain promises were made with regard to an update of this here website. My thoughts are not yet gathered, though. Books line my shelves but plastic frogs and capsule hotel boxers clutter my featherweight desk, and also my concentration. (The new apartment has a lovely meditative sunroom, but it's dark as I write these words, and I do not yet have a bulb for the eagle lamp I bought from the Salvation Army. An eagle lamp is to a sunroom like a floor is to the rest of the apartment: really a fine thing to have.)

I will gather my thoughts in time, though; all is well. Cheeta's masterpiece is away, being framed by experts. I am in agreement with my cats about the cool autumnal air.

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Comments

Spotrick says:
And that's why monkeys should not be allowed to drive.

Kat(i)e says:
I am confused - should I be looking at this from right to left? Either way it seems the cartoon is out of order.. >Is he is the car or not? Why does he get out midway thru and look at the car as though it's not his "Oh well, I'll drive it anyway! >Insert maniacal monkey laugh here<"

chimpsonfilm says:
It's a tough one. If we go right to left, then we can assume that he was driving really fast but in a straight line (1), got frustrated with the fact that the car was fully under his control and easy to operate, which is not as he was led to expect machinery would be (2), and decided to drink in order to restore his confusion toward human technology (3) - possibly this all relates to a deep-seated fear of evolution and absorption into the mechanized human world on the monkey's part. I'm not sure. Sadly, my kanji reading ability is abysmal.

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If anyone died from suspense at the end of the last entry, I sincerely apologize. Sometimes, the power of these situations is too much even for my unstoppable reporting technique to contain. There should be disclaimers, perhaps. But now, I must continue. If you are returning to this website late and you have not read the first entry in this series, do not go any further; it will make no sense to you, and you are likely to find your emotions overwhelmed.

So, at the end of the last entry, I was in Japan, and the original painting by the famous monkey was in Chicago. I was not sure that my mother could be entrusted with the care of fine art, but I had little choice. I've read a lot about how to be an art collector, and the literature is unambiguous on the point that you should not dent or bend the fine art, both of which stood a strong chance of happening if the monkey painting had to make two trips through customs. (This was around the time that Steve Wynn poked a hole through his Picasso; abuse of fine art was a hot-button topic.)

(I realize that some may consider my concern for the care of art hypocritical in light of a certain story that has been going around for years about my tenure as a security guard at the Krannert Art Museum and a painting which is shown on this page. In response, I kind of gaze off into the distance, and then suddenly change the subject.)

I could only trust that my mother would not botch the job. The seasons turned; beautiful autumn came to Hiroshima and the Chugoku area, winter followed and with it visits from friends, and spring slid out from behind all those cold winds. It was time to leave Japan again. I went on a long trip, returned to Japan a third time in order to pick up my stuff, and took my sweet time going from the west coast of the United States to my once and future home in Chicago. Through all of that, the painting by the famous monkey waited, hidden to me and to the world. My mother was under strict orders not to open it; whatever kind of wrapping those chimps had managed would have to serve as the last line of defense for the fine art inside.

Because I have, as I said, read extensively from the literature, I was aware that an unveiling is the sort of thing an art collector does with brand-new, never-before-seen artwork, so I announced that I would be holding one of those after I got back to Chicago. (Of course you're invited.) As you can imagine, though, I was more than a bit concerned when my mother admitted that she couldn't find the monkey painting, even though she knew it was around there somewhere. Tense days and nights followed. My mother doesn't actually do a whole lot except go to work and take yoga classes once a week, so she dedicated herself to the task of figuring out where she put the monkey painting, and by the next time I visited, she had found it. The painting was expertly packaged in exactly the sort of big cardboard envelope that humans might use.

"Well done, Dan," I said, softly. "Well done."

I had to open it. The literature is ambiguous on the point of whether the art collector himself is allowed to see the artwork before the unveiling, but I decided to excuse the impulse; I am, after all, new at this, and can be forgiven a few lapses in procedure. I slid my finger under the flap of the envelope, and removed a few knick-knacks: a certificate of authenticity, an autographed photo of Cheeta, and some other papers of that ilk. And then there was nothing else between me and the painting.

It is really fucking good. I was genuinely astonished from the moment I laid eyes upon it. I had an idea in mind when I chose the colors green, brown, and yellow, and Cheeta understood completely, transforming my pithy notion into the stuff of great artwork. The painting is abstract, and it is suggestive of bananas hidden in a forest. (The forest may be upside down.) I don't mind admitting that I almost cried; I had a masterpiece in my hands. At last, I had my own painting by a famous monkey.

Well, the unveiling is still yet to come. I need to get a job and possibly a new apartment first. Since I am still unemployed, I have plenty of time for scientific analysis, and I am pleased to announce, after extensive testing, that my famous monkey painting is a remarkable 54% better than anything Van Gogh ever did, which is saying something, because Van Gogh is really considered one of the major painters of his era. It is also 16% better than 82% of Picasso's work, 7% better than 70% of the remaining 18%, and the rest has yet to be calculated, but it's looking good for the monkey, and also for my happy life as an art collector.

I will be commissioning another painting shortly after getting a job.

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