Getting Strange

Near Montrose Harbor, past the bird sanctuary where all the twitter twitters go, there is a small pier that curls out like a question mark.

Old men and fat women fish off there, laughing and spilling guts and bait along the wind-lapped concrete. The spray paint on the ground crosses out diving in, no no no, don't do that. As you slowly ride your red bicycle along the questioning curl, the wind spits at you, making you want to close your eyes but you can't, for fear of riding your bike comically off the edge. You reach the end of the question mark and hop off your bike, propping it near the center rail, a rained-on metal divider like velvet ropes letting you know one side is VIP, the other is just plain P.

On Labor Day weekend, I took a four-hour bike ride. On that ride, somewhere between the question mark pier and the black gate in Olive Park, my Chicago finally made a bit more sense.

This blog - half a study about how people choose to divide, half me bragging about the cool shit I do on weekends - finally had a real-life version of a thesis statement. Labor Day brought it all together, from tattooed punks to nudity to just being on a bike. And this is a good place to go out on.

I started my trip pedaling down North Avenue, dodging cars and hopping hills and generally wondering if the sleeveless, beer-advertising muscle shirt I made for the Communist theme party (I was Communist ideology: no class) would make my farmer's tan go away or just move it north.

North Avenue Beach is a delight for the senses on Labor Day. A spread full of lovely half-nudity, like the first time a girl is in her underwear in your room and you realize you don't have to worry about your parents barging in. There are the people you want to touch and wonder at, gender determined what your predilection is. There are also the people you don't want to touch, wonder at or even inhabit the same plane of existence as.

They are all the people you see on the street, share the city with, know and love, like, hate or are completely indifferent to. They are your neighbors and co-Chicagoans and you can't help but look to see what their clothes have been hiding this whole time. A strange tattoo. Pastiness or great tans. Big rolls of fat or ponderous breasts. Abs.

As the rocking 80s this-is-the-music-people-listen-to-on-the-beach-in-movies music blared into the sun, I parked and walked around a bit. I sat under the shade of a tree, wondering how creepy it would be to talk to the pretty girl sitting and reading under the shade of a different tree. Pretty creepy, I decided, letting the sand run through my fingers. I retrieved my bike and pedaled south.

And here's where it started to make sense.

Everyone was there. And I mean everyone. There were families and lone walkers of every race, class, creed. There were Mohawks there and military buzz-cuts. There were sunbathers covered in tattoos and bicyclists covered by chadors.

There were punks there and drunks there, stoners and loners. There were old smelly hippies and Lincoln Park chippies. There were hip-hopping rappers and cock-teasing slappers. Trixies and Chads. Suburbanite dads. An old 80s rocker. A kid playing soccer. There were total geek-nerds and absolute turds. There were people who like rhyming descriptions of the crowds on the bike path along Lake Michigan on Labor Day weekend and people who ... don't. They think it's a little too "Goodnight Moon."

A selection of every self-imposed social group I would ever meet was at the beach that day. And it all seemed so damn silly.

We spend our lives defining ourselves in meaningless groups. I'm a hippie. I'm an emo. I'm a Sheboygan Synod Presbo-Luthero-Catholitarian. Meaningless. Useless. No good. "Granfalloons," Kurt Vonnegut called them.

But we all like a sunny day at the beach. Muslim and Jew and rockabilly guy and everybody except for those people who get their kicks dressing as vampires, I guess.

With my grand revelation of "People have a lot in common" in mind, I pedaled on, wondering if I really wanted ice cream or if the dairy would just make me phlegmy (it wasn't all deep, pretentious musing.) I had to pay attention to where I was going so I didn't run into anybody. I had to re-apply some sunscreen. I smiled at a girl and she smiled back. That was nice.

I'm leaving Chicago.

I have a three-month internship writing for a wire service in Thailand, then I'm off to wherever the job search takes me. I might come back. I might not. I just don't know.

The Windy Citizen publisher and I have discussed the possibility of changing this blog's focus to more of a Chicagoan's view of southeast Asia during my internship. That is to be determined. My new bosses might not like it.

I wrote this entry weeks ago and plan to post it Sept. 18, the day I leave. [Author's note: The plane leaves in less than 12 hours from the time I'm posting this.] It's remained the same during that time, save only a few minor edits, such as the addition of this sentence.

I want to leave this beautiful, bizarre city thinking about that curvy pier near Montrose Harbor, past the bird sanctuary where all the twitter twitters go. I want to fly out of O'Hare thinking about the water and the wind and the moment when, back on land, I looked out at the pier and smiled, realizing finally what it looked like.

Chicago is punctuated for me. Punctuated with memories and emotions and friends and lovers and, more literally, with a giant question mark curling out into Lake Michigan.

I don't know where I'm heading. I don't know what I'm doing. I won't know how much I left behind until I'm gone.

I'm excited to find out.

This is going to get strange.

Somewhere in Chicago there is a squeaky microphone set up in the poorly lit back room of a bar.

And you can bet your ass there will be stand-ups and poets fighting over it.

I recently attended another zine reading. Zines, to review, are homemade, usually photocopied magazines in which people put their own art and writing. They're amazing or horrible, but always one of the purest forms of self-expression out there.

It was arranged by the same people who put together the last zine reading I attended. On the El ride there, I even ran into the guy with the razor blade tattoo on his neck. We talked about the cupcakes from before.

As I have already covered this topic, I didn't go to the reading intending to write about this. I had a friend reading and I dropped by for a bit.

The event was at the Holiday Club, a swank bar covered head-to-toe (or whatever the bar equivalents of heads and toes are) with 1950s Rat Pack memorabilia. The reading was in the back room, where they host karaoke once a week.

I'm going to talk about the reading and about the strange social phenomenon that happened that night. But before I do, I have to talk about Sept. 3, my birthday, when I decided to treat myself by reading a bit of my own work at the literary open mic at Chinaski's in Bucktown.

I sucked.

It wasn't that the crowd was distracted or the mood was off. What I wrote wasn't very good. It was my own damn fault for reading it to a roomful of strangers, expecting them to like it.

So when I criticize some of the people who read at the Holiday Club, bear in mind this comes from a person who also knows the agony of polite golf claps and "OK, our next reader is ..."

Back to the Holiday Club, the zine reading started well. For the first few readers, the prose was taut and good. Then the fissures - social and literary - started.

A reader was introduced as a stand-up comic. The audience tensed. Someone grumbled. The emcee quickly added that the comic wasn't going to do his act and the tension dissipated.

My subculture sense tingling, I realized something was going on. Zinesters don't like stand-ups, but some stand-ups do zines? A schism in the spoken word community. How odd.

The stand-up's reading was great, by the way. It was a touching, honest, hilarious account of the disturbing circumstances under which he lost his virginity. Fantastic.

After a few readers, though, a sad change occurred. The zinesters, poets and spoken worders started to - from my completely personal and flawed perspective - suck donkey ass.

One of the first examples was an elegant Asian woman with a swooping, backless dress and the poise and grace of a Lipizzaner. She strode regally to the microphone and gave the brief disclaimer that all her stories were fiction.

"So don't take it too seriously," she said with a charming and deliberately sexy smile.

I liked this woman. I was ready to hear what she had to say. I was in.

Then she read a story written from the point of view of a girl getting raped. In the last line, it was revealed that the rapist was the girl's father.

Wow.

Now, I must tread carefully here. Incest is rightfully a touchy, horrific subject. Although this blog takes a comedic tone, I must clarify that my next few lines do not imply any frivolity at the expense of those untold millions who have been abused in one of the the deepest, most destructive ways imaginable.

The woman's story was an utter piece of crap

It was pulling out incest for cheap shock value, the way "Family Guy," "South Park" and "American Dad" have all used cannibalism for a "Whoa, did they really do that?" punch line. Except she wasn't trying for a silly gag. She was trying to use something horrible to let us all know that she was deep, dark and oh-so-literary. Classy.

I'm not saying writers should avoid taboo topics. I'm saying that when "Janie's Got a Gun" gets the point across better than your story, don't muck about in topics beyond your writing ability.

The woman read a few more pieces of crap, then a couple more bad readers came up. Some good ones too, but a lot of bad ones all in a row. I vaguely recall a metalhead guy reading about metalhead things.

Then people started to leave. And I mean people scheduled to read.

There was a brief intermission, during which we were told the night would be a little shorter. We in the audience chatted, drank and quietly made fun of the readings we didn't like. I'm sure someone there hated all the ones I loved.

Once the intermission ended, the emcee announced that there had been some additions to the line-up.

The stand-ups had come to save the day.

I suppose having a stand-up act is like being a doctor, superhero or that guy the Rolling Stones pulled up on stage to play the drums when Keith Moon couldn't perform. You never know when you'll be needed.

"Help! I need to be told how men and women think differently!"

"For the love of God, someone ask how everybody's doing tonight!"

Always on call. Always at the ready, willing to jump in front of a microphone to talk about ex-girlfriends and inform people to tip the bartender. A comic's life is a lonely one. Where's their parade? Where are their medals?

OK, I'm being flip. And the comics did sort of save the night. A few acts were inspired, others very good.

I'm just stuck on the weird literary vs. comedic split among people who want to hop on a mic in front of a room full of drunken strangers. Even among that very small spoken word subculture, there is a divide. The divide was shown when people grumbled at the comic who wrote. The divide was exacerbated by the superhero comedians who saw a chance both to save the day and do their act.

If there is a microphone, someone wants to step in front of it to either bare their soul or make a few chuckle chuckles happen.

And don't forget that the Holiday Club also uses that microphone for karaoke once a week.

I was dressed like a clown, traveling through a cavalcade of sugar skulls, monster movie posters, tiny calaveras and replica human skulls, one of which I had been assured wasn't a replica.

The walls were painted the color of blood, as was a good portion of my forehead. A bone-white cat sauntered by, pausing only to glance at me pityingly as I trod through the skeletal gauntlet toward the bonfire.

Finally, I made my way to the backyard, where I found ... a small barbecue with a bunch of metalheads tossing copies of the Chicago Reader into a small, brick fire pit.

A man looked over at me. His head was shaved and he had a tight devil-beard circling his face.

"Hey," he said, looking me over. "You want a burger?"

I shook my head no, but helped myself to a little hummus dip with pita. It was quite good.

Allow me to explain this weird little tale. But to do that, I must enlist the help of my good friend Depresso the Exhausted Clown.

What a handsome, handsome clown. He just oozes virility, wisdom and cream pie filling. He's the type of clown men want to be and ladies want to be crammed in a tiny little car with. When this clown's pants drop, they stay dropped. And you know what they say about guys with big shoes.

This man is the world's sexiest clown.

Yeah, it's me.

Now I have a friend who's trying to break into the world of being an alternative clown or, to use an industry term I just made up, an "alternaclown."

I've never seen her show, but apparently it has involved fire, arrows, a typewriter and, until it broke, an accordion. I'll try to cover her clown show whenever the next one is.

Knowing of this blog and my quest for the weird, the clown girl gave me a call to see if I wanted to go to, as she put it, a "circus party." There would be people dressed like lion tamers, trapeze girls, sideshow geeks, ringmasters and, of course, clowns. Half costume party, half welcoming site for the circus subculture apparently bubbling just under the surface.

Well, I was all over it like red on Ronald's nose. I would finally get to be a clown.

This is a dream I've had since I was a small, strange child and my parents took me to Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisc. I was enthralled. I loved the clowns, just happy enough to make you happy and just scary enough to be exciting. They thrilled me and titillated me, but most important to a boy that age, they made my sister very, very uncomfortable.

I went home from the museum with a yearning in my heart and a foam clown nose I wore too often to be sanitary.

So I was thrilled to get my invite to experience the psycho-circus mystique and the people who adhere to the world of freaks, geeks and clowns.

But then the party got cancelled, which is why I'm blogging about wearing makeup at a barbecue.

Here are a few pictures showing my transformation from Paul, overworked grad student, to Depresso, tired clown. Clown girl did my makeup.

And here's a picture showing why you should never take a flash photo two feet from someone's eyes.

So off clown girl and I went, into the night on our bicycles.

We got to the party and it was great, but very chill. The apartment dwellers had a real monster-movie, Dia-de-los-Muertos aesthetic, which really kicked the night off right. There was music, conversation, lawn chairs, a cat on a leash (which I, while dressed as a clown, thought was the weirdest thing I've seen in a while). I chatted for a long time with a molecular geneticist. Even the weird cadre of metalheads turned out to be really cool.

So what's it like being a clown? Well, I felt more sure of myself than I had in a long time. I knew I had the makeup on, so it wasn't really me. When someone annoyed me, I told them so in a firm but respectful way. I didn't try to do my usual thing of trying to make everyone happy.

Sort of ironic that it's the clown me that doesn't care about entertaining people.

Also, Depresso apparently talks in a vaguely New Yorkish accent. That one weirded even me out.

Oh, but here are the life lessons I promised:

1. When you're dressed in an extreme outfit, you can do no wrong. Act like a jackass, you're meeting their expectations anyway. Act reasonably intelligent and normal, you sound twice as smart because your words are coming from a freakshow. This actually applies to the greater subculture search that is this blog's mission. I now get you, goths. I'm onto your game.
2. People in their 30s still throw parties that last until dawn. That's good for a late 20s gentleman such as myself to know.
3. Metalheads and clowns, while enemies in the wild, are not so different when it comes down to it. However, people who help clean up everything when the cops tell you to go inside because the neighbors complained and the jackasses who just split inside are two tribes that can never truly come together.

Finally, the last lesson is that you should really watch this cool video I made. I think it says it all.

I have recently acquired the one thing every 20-something white liberal craves and longs after but never quite thinks he'll get - a gay, minority friend.

Envy me, all you people who go to Critical Mass on your Treks. Yearn to be me, fellow people who threatened to move to Canada in November 2000 and November 2004. Worship me, Utne Reader readers.

I could be the King of Wicker Park. Co-king with my gay, gay friend.

Now, it's a documented phenomenon. See this link to StuffWhitePeopleLike.com for more proof.

But I do have to clarify that he's not my friend because he's gay. He's my friend because he does a really hilarious impression of Heath Ledger as The Joker.

Marriages have been formed on less.

But on Saturday, this friendship offered me a glimpse into the subculture of subcultures, the Holy Grail of alt living. And, that night, I had my in to a whole new and tastefully decorated world.

Now, I've been to gay bars before. With ex-girlfriends. Who I had heterosexual sex with. Often. And never while thinking of Colin Firth.

But, as I told my roommate when I came home (before I fed our precious little cat), I have never been to so many gay bars before in my life.

Strangely, I had planned to stay in on Saturday.

I was doing some Windy Citizen stuff when "Jeff" (pseudonym at his request) Gchatted me to see what I was up to. I said that I was up to nothing and we went back and forth about whether there were any good karaoke bars in town. We decided to meet up with our friend "Lindsay" (Another minority! I am soooooo liberal!) and hit up one in Boystown.

Now, I am liberal and tolerant. But I'm also shallow and needy. So I decided to dress ... a little gay. Getting hit on is getting hit on and I wanted some massive ego uppers.

I put on the nice jeans, a white T-shirt and an unbuttoned button-up short-sleeved shirt over it. Button-up shirt for no reason? Pure stylish affectation!

I show up at Jeff's apartment. He looks at me and shakes his head.

"That's not gay," he said.

Damn. It wasn't a good start. Once again, I had confused gay and Jimmy Buffett.

Now during the very expensive night, there were two cab rides and four gay bars. I'll break down the gay bars accordingly.

Gay bar number one: The gay sports bar.

• Turns out the karaoke wasn't going on that night. I don't know what to say here other than that I'm a really dangerous darts player.
• No, I mean I'm really bad. One shot bounced into the other room.
• Also, I lost at Cutthroat three times. But I came in ahead of Lindsay each time. I can't beat gay Filipinos, but tiny Japanese women ... heh heh heh. Feel my pool-playing wrath.

Gay bar number two: The gay bar with the dancing guy.

• Now, I don't know the straight equivalent here. There really isn't one. It wasn't quite a strip club because the guy wasn't stripping. He came onstage in a Speedo, left in a Speedo and danced a lot in the meantime.
• Also, there was only one of him. One guy. One stage. No Tiffani at stage number two, all right, let's give it up for Tiffaniiiiiiiiiii!!! Coming up next on stage number three, Kryyyyyyyyyyystle!
• But I really liked the place for one reason. I always like when the person serving me food and/or beverages calls me "honey."
• I like it at Waffle Houses, I like it when I'm back in Rockford for a family dinner and I even like it when an old gay man wearing suspenders over a T-shirt gives me two Long Islands and a Corona.
• What can I say? I'm a sucker for affection.

Gay bar number three: The really nice gay bar with the atrium feel.

• Nothing really to say here. It was a really nice bar.
• This was the point in the night, though, where I realized I was more tolerant of bars knowing they were gay.
• I wouldn't have touched this place with the dancer from the last bar's ten-foot pole if it were a straight bar. I would have said "fern bar," "meathead bar," "Get me back to the pool-playing bar where everyone just happens to be gay."
• But since they were gay, I was cool with it.
• Dirty double-standard? Obnoxious white liberal pretense of tolerance? Desire to see if Colin Firth happened to be there? I don't know. But I did have fun.

Gay bar number four: The dance club. With gays.

• I like to dance.

Stop number five: The Golden Angel.

• Despite the watersports-sounding name (Thank you, Dan Savage, for that term), this was just a diner where three friends ate breakfast food and shot the idiomatic shit.
• The recently de-closeted "Jeff" was horrified to find out that we all knew. I was horrified to find out that this one girl I have no interest in was telling people I was creepy-stalking her. We talked about grad school and we talked about why the hollandaise sauce on my Eggs Benedict was yellow.
• Hollandaise sauce isn't supposed to be yellow.

It was a great night. I got a view into an alternative culture to which I had not previously been privy and, more importantly, I finally got to see the very prim and proper Lindsay get a few drinks in her. She claims it was the 4 ½ inch heels that made her wobble, but we all know better.

The intervention is set for Tuesday.

And, thanks to the games of Cutthroat, we all got nicknames. Mine's "Incredibly Lucky Number Seven." Comment below and I'll explain.

There was no lesson learned other than to stop using my friends for blog fodder. We just had fun, no one got plowed and it was honestly one of the most clean, honest, fun nights I've had in a long time.

So here's to Boystown. Long shall she reign.

You know what a bunch of drunken punks, tattooed slackers and the Gene Simmons-looking guy with the full-length white coat and the black leather shirt want to see?

A deeeeeee jaaaaaayyyyyy.

The show was Gogol Bordello. And the opening act made my friend leave.

For those of you who don't know, Gogol Bordello is an absolutely insane gypsy punk band. They bust out the accordion, the fiddle and more ethnic diversity than a Benetton ad and the Burger King Kids Club combined. Ukrainians, Russians, Thai-Americans, Ecuadorians, a woman who Wikipedia says is "Chinese Scottish" and more.

They're loud, amazing and make me want to jump up and scream along every time I hear them.

I can't really listen to them in the car.

Here's a picture of the band:

Gypsy. Punk. Say those words and try not to feel the love.

Now here's a picture of the opening act:

See how they might not draw the same crowds?

Now let me explain something to you, DJs. I don't mind your existence, in the same way that I don't mind the existence of giant spiders that jump out of holes they dug in the desert sand.

But that (and the fact I sunburn easily) is why I don't go to deserts.

So I don't mind the existence of skinny little DJs charging people scores of dollars to watch and marvel at how well they operate a record player. But don't go to my gypsy punk shows and I won't go to your frat-boy jamborees. I get bars, you get those $3,000 a month apartments intentionally designed to look like converted factory lofts. Got it? Good.

I understand that DJs are needed. They're needed to play music when musicians can't be there. Sort of like I do. At home. On the couch. With the $30 I didn't pay to watch someone do the exact same thing.

Also, it was a VHS or Beta DJ set. As a much hipper friend explained to me, this is part of a new trend in music. Bands offer DJ shows now. So we were watching VHS or Beta spin VHS or Beta songs.

You know what would have been great, as long as those guys were there anyway? Playing their songs on instruments, rather than just showing off how they sounded at a time when they cared enough to actually lift a guitar.

I don't blame the Metro. When I first bought the tickets, the Ting Tings were scheduled to be the other act. I like the Ting Tings. Then, I was reading the Onion a few weeks later and I saw that the ad now said "guest TBA."

So I guessed something happened with the Ting Tings. I figured a fight. A fight between Ting Tings lead singer Katie White and "Caroline," a Metro booker I just made up. The fight was probably about the billing, laced with undercurrents of Caroline coming to terms with new and exciting urges.

So, I'll give the Metro credit that four southern boys trying to spin wasn't the first option considered. But they considered it an option.

How bad was it? Allow me to quote my friend Nathan, who goes by Knathan for short. I liked it so much I text messaged it to myself.

"To be honest, Paul, I haven't been angry in a long time. But this night, this bullshit ... I gotta go."

Then he left. Due to earlier cancellations, the party of four had become me. Alone. With Gogol Bordello.

I hung. I rocked. I pushed into the crowd as part of an experiment to see how far I could get. (Almost to the bouncer, it turns out). But I ended up going home before the show ended.

Not that Gogol Bordello wasn't amazing. It's just not much fun to be amazed alone.

It was a good night and I'm glad I went. But, with Chicago going all music-crazy during Lollapalooza weekend (read the Lollablog, read the Lollablog), it would be nice if people just took the two seconds to remember people like live music. Live music.

And I'm sorry, man. Just because you're standing in the same room while your record is played, it's still not a concert.

When the bear started handing out smaller bears, I knew I had finally found something truly bizarre.

As readers of this blog - or at least readers of the caption in the upper left corner - might know, this blog is one man's search for a truly alternative culture. Something self-sustaining and utterly, insanely unique and good.

I have talked to poets, punkers, hippies, hipsters, nudists, nerds, comedians and, unfortunately, nothing else that starts with a C to keep the alliterative thing going. But nothing truly worked until now. Nothing really surprised me until this.

I'm talking about the good people of Poland.

I recently attended a wedding with my Polish friend Christina Zdanwskzewskszsk or something. It was a good arrangement. She needed a date; I needed an open bar.

I pulled out the suit, Miss Zdanzsoszwzkwzw pulled out the dress and we went off to Buffalo Grove to enjoy a night of polka and sausage.

Miss Zdanzyzzzzzzzzzzzzzwk (whose real last name would be worth 33 points in Scrabble) was kind enough to send me some pictures of the event, so I leave it to you to decide if this truly meets the criteria for strange.

Your recently sunburned author enjoys a forkful of raw meat that had been sitting on the appetizer tray for an unknown period of time. It was delicious. Other delicacies included little pies of unflavored gelatin with peas and carrots encased (stuczielina).

In the background of the above shot, you can see one of nature's many wonders as, after six weeks, our plucky little caterpillar emerges from its cocoon as a middle-aged Polish woman.

This is the priest we stalked.

I didn't get his name, but he was 26 and a total swankster when it came to the hipness. He had gelled hair perfect for a night out at Barleycorn, a pinstriped suit over his cassock and glasses that Bono and Elvis Costello would have gotten into a fistfight over. Christina and I spend much of the night trying to surreptitiously photograph the priest, to varying degrees of success.

And then, victory! Red-eyed victory!

That's Miss Zdanoskoyawiczskiski's hair and shoulder in the left side of the picture. I was "taking a nice shot of her" as my cover for paparazzo-hunting Father Bono there.

There was more weirdness in the night. The little brown beetles that kept falling on my date, the little face the caterers made out of the fruit on the fruit display, the fact that our table setting card was missing so we spent 20 minutes trying to decide if there actually had been an invitation and other magical oddness I thought nothing could top.

Then came the bear.

It started when one of the two electric piano players started saying something in Polish into the mic. Christina translated.

"Bring all the children out ... come out to the floor ... misiu. Misiu? I had a misiu!"

A smattering of children came out, and then I found out what misiu means in Polish. Teddy bear.

I tell you, you leave your date alone for a second ...

The bear danced with the children for song after song after song. The band played Polish children's songs, one of which Miss Zdwarrenzevon and new friend Karoline translated as being about a green cucumber.

By this point, Christina, Karoline, her date and I were clustered in the bar section. The raw meat things were still out. The girls were giving Polish lessons to me and the other guy (James). I had barszcz for the first time. That's a beet soup also known as Polish borscht. It was fantastic.

Every so often, we would send out an emissary to check on what the bear was doing.

"Now he's handing something out to the kids," James said. "Looks like little pillows."

"Little pillows?" said I. "Let me see."

They weren't little pillows. They were little misius. Little teddy bears. Don't get me wrong - this was a wonderful, sweet gesture that the kids loved. But the bear was distributing tiny versions of itself.

Weird. I don't know what else to say.

At the end of the day, it was a wedding - and a beautiful one. The bride was radiant, the groom handsome and they had the most heartbreaking, touching story. Little girls danced with their daddies, and the bride's father wept when he danced with his no-longer-little daughter.

It was beautiful, odd and at points awkward for a person whose sole knowledge of Polish culture comes from bad jokes about solar-powered flashlights and screen doors on submarines. But it was a wedding and, no matter the culture, weddings are always about the same things.

Weddings are about family, about welcoming new people in and watching as someone you love with all your heart takes a step away, joining another. They're about tradition and heritage. They're about old women telling stories of years past and little girls playing with the rose petals. They're about the simple, communal pleasure of sharing a meal with a roomful of strangers, maybe becoming friends with one or two of them. At least friends until the car trip home.

And, of course, they're about love. The type of love that fills a banquet hall.

And now, here's a list of Polish words I learned and their values in Scrabble.

Zyweic - A delicious Polish beer. 23 points.

Dziewczyna - Girl. 37 points.

Dziękuję - Thank you. 29 points.

Proszę - Please. 17 points.

Wódka - Vodka. 13 points.

Zielony ogórek - Green cucumber. 30 points.

The women were of the type who wouldn't make you look up from your Sudoku on the L, but on-stage, they were the sexiest I've ever seen.

Last week, I was lucky enough to be taken to the Belmont Burlesque at the Abbey Pub at 3420 W. Grace.

My friend and I had originally planned that night to attend Nerd Fest, a hook-up event for sexy, sexy nerds. It's run by the folks at Nerds at Heart. Couldn't give them a full blog entry, but at least I can give them a mention.

The plans were switched by phone late, late the night before. Bear in mind, I was completely exhausted.

Her: "So we could go to Nerd Fest, or ... there's a weekly burlesque show at this bar I know."

Me (yawning, yearning for bed): "Oh, well we can figure that out tomorrow."

Her: (Pause) "Um, OK."

Me: "Yeah, I'm real tired. I'll call you tomorrow."

Hanging up of phone.

My Roommate: "What was that about?"

Me: "Oh, K_____ said she's not sure if she wants to go to the nerd thing or ... to ... a ... hold on a second."

Frantic re-dialing.

Her: "Hello?"

Me: "BURLESQUE!"

So we ended up going.

Now this was no strip club with VIP rooms, siliconed ladies pretending they care and the pervasive stench of desperation and hepatitis filling a neon-laden room. This is a fine Irish pub that, once a week, lets beautiful women take off their clothes on its stage.

And these women were beautiful.

Now they weren't all what your average meathead would call attractive. Some would have to put "a few extra pounds" on their Chicago Reader Personals ads, to be frank. But, lord, once the lights went on, all eyes were on them.

It wasn't the sex, it was the titilation and the humor. It was the fact these women were enjoying themselves.

I saw a Sally Rand fan dance. I saw one of those mythical dances where a woman comes out covered in balloons and slowly pops them one by one. I saw a beach-themed musical number where the dancer actually put on more clothes at the end and it still was unrelentingly sexy.

And I never saw more of any of the women than panties and pasties allowed. "World Famous" Chicago clubs can offer full views, but they can't make it as tauntingly, endearingly alluring as the Belmont Burlesque.

My friend and I hooted and hollered and clapped. We lauded the women and the Tom Waits cover band that followed.

It was sexy with class and fun. It was amazing.

Now there's been a lot written about burlesque and feminism, even here in the Windy Citizen.

But the thing that jumped out at me was not a feminist statement (although, in all fairness, I could have just missed it.)

The thing that jumped out at me was that the performers were having as much fun as the audience.

I'm going to end up by quoting burlesque legend Sally Rand, who first wowed the world right here in Chicago, performing her famous fan dance at the 1933-34 Century of Progress World's Fair. 

"Beauty comes from within; a greedy, avaricious, gossipy woman cannot be beautiful."

Take that, Admiral Theatre.

So I just got back from Bloomington, Indiana, where I spent four days trying to help a gay friend find a gay bar and surveying folks, including a murderous hobo (sorry, "rail rider") and a 74-year-old woman who explained how often she gets to have sex with her lover in Vancouver.

Now I'm sitting back in my un-air-conditioned Logan Square apartment drinking an Indiana-microbrewed wheat ale, ignoring the cat, checking on the condition of the expanding Incredible Hulk toy my roommate is trying to grow and figuring out where I can safely throw my boomerang.

My life isn't crazy enough.

That wasn't an example of litotes, which Schott's Original Miscellany tells me is a rhetorical device using "deliberate understatement for dramatic or comic effect." I really don't think my life is crazy enough.

(Side note: I just got a Facebook notification from one of the other Indiana-trippers about how, if we stayed one more day, we could have seen a Chick-Fil-A promotion where people dressed like cows get free meals. I still don't think things are crazy enough.)

Maybe I'm tired from drinking last night as the only liker-of-girls in Bloomington's sole gay bar, but I'm feeling a bit underwhelmed by this experiment. I've enjoyed the things I've blogged on: the punk poets, the science geeks, the naked bikers and so on. I've loved this summer to pieces. I just haven't been shocked by anything.

Maybe my weird, pointless-in-the-good-way life has inured me to shock. Watching a friend design and build an amped musical saw or the incident with the masturbating Jamaican might have put me in a more competitive league in terms of being shocked by crazy.

Or maybe it's because when you get the right eyes, the world isn't shocking. It's a beautiful, wonderful place filled with abject horrors, but it all sort of makes sense in a way. No one really knows what to do, and we're all figuring it out on the fly. We do what seems to fit at the moment. For some, it's getting married and growing some kids. For others, it's dressing up in pajamas and goggles and getting into a fight at the Columbia (Missouri) Mall over who is, in fact, the Burger King.

That was my birthday present to him.

I didn't bat an eye when the rail rider answered the survey question "If retired, former occupation" with "So when I was 15, I killed a guy." We actually went on to have quite a nice conversation. He lives in the woods outside Bloomington and gets his hair cut more often than I do.

Tonight, I could go to a barbeque at a former dominatrix's house (we went to high school together) or to a party celebrating Alaska before the ice caps are expected to melt this summer. I'm thinking of skipping both and seeing if my roommate wants to go see the new Hellboy.

Maybe I'm tired from plastering Bloomington with surveys.

Maybe I'm an absolute lunatic who got a blog just to chart his full decline into that guy at the old folks' home who just keeps giggling.

Or maybe the world is chock-full of strangeness, and once you start to equate it with normality, things just make more sense.

I'm going to check on the Hulk once more and start tabulating survey data. Like I said, we're figuring it out on the fly. A nice, boring night just seems to fit.

And the old lady visits Vancouver three to four times a year.

So, I have a very simple job here at the Windy Citizen. Do crazy stuff, do it with crazy people and don't miss the damn zombie march.

I missed the damn zombie march. It was over the weekend.

But the way I even found out about it is my segue into this week's topic – astrophysics and cosmology.

For all my readers who made it past those three words, I spent June 14 riding my bike naked through Chicago, and I spent June 16 at a drunken lecture about dark matter and dark energy. At the lecture I heard about an upcoming zombie march that I later missed by one day. That's the segue.

The event was the most recent installment of Café Scientifique at the Map Room in Bucktown.

Café Scientifique is a global thing started by those crazy Brits, with their "enquiries" and expansive use of the letter "u" (colour, flavour, ouranges). All it is is a push to get people to bring science out of the classroom and into coffee shops, restaurants or, in this case, a Bucktown bar.

If you've never been to the Map Room, go. It's one of those every-beer-on-the-planet bars but with old folks, young folks and everything in between. Good mix.

Actually, don't go. Leave more room for me.

But back to the café. I pretty much invited everyone I know. I even did the Facebook thing, which proves that Facebook is the best way to get rejected by even your tangential acquaintances en masse. I invited 47 or so people. One came. We had a blast, though.

So what's more alternative than physics? Punk? "Oh, I'm angry." Hip-hop? "Oh, I'm angry but have rhythm." Nerd-core? "Oh, I'm angry but scared of everyone and love Cartoon Network's Adult Swim."

You want people who don't give a Plank's constant about social mores, gather your geeks, my friend.

A bit of percussion to this tone: I arrived early and, as I was one of the first 50, got a table. Many arrived late. Two women – one a southeast Asian with blue hair and tattoos and the other a completely shaved-head Caucasian with a bindi – politely asked if they could join my table. I told them to wait to see if my friends showed but, if not, they were welcome to join.

Later, an older woman with the reek of high school English teacher – the nutty one – just sat down at my table uninvited and wouldn't leave even after I told her and her guy about the impending friends. It was that kind of party.

The speaker was Professor Michael S. Turner of the University of Chicago. I'm not going to try to explain the dark matter and dark energy. I'll let his site try.

I'll just give a primer of what I remember between fine Belgian beers: Dark energy is causing the expansion of the universe, dark matter is a term for the percentage of the universe that we can't see but can detect through its effects on visible matter and then some wacky joke to complete the comedic rule of three. I think my writing's getting a bit formulaic.

The lecture itself was too short and really hard to hear. The question-and-answer session, however, rocked. The image of a cosmologist standing on a pool table with a beer in one hand and a microphone in the other is one that I hope never leaves me.

Turner fielded question after question from increasingly drunk smart people on the nature of the universe, cuts to science funding, the planned Large Hadron Collider on the Franco-Swiss border and any number of other topics. It was amazing and amazing fun.

Granted, I'm a nerd, but I had fun.

Also, this whole topic was sort of an excuse to tell one of my favorite jokes. I figure that anyone who made it this far might find this funny too.

Here it goes:

Heisenberg is in a car. Cop pulls him over. Cop says, "Do you have any idea how fast you were going?"

Heisenberg said, "No, but I know where I am."

Click here to get it explained, you wussies.

My mom will be happy when she finds out I wore my bicycle helmet. She probably won't be so happy when she finds out I didn't wear pants.

I went to the Chicago leg of the World Naked Bike Ride, folks. And I had a blast.

A bit of explanation before I delve into the sights and sounds. It's going to be mostly descriptive because I didn't want to post pictures of naked or semi-naked people without their permission and because that girl hasn't e-mailed me the pictures of me in my undies yet. A common lament.

The event is a world-wide one, with events in 70 cities in 20 countries. I didn't realize how cool that was until a completely nude girl from Indiana named Diana mentioned that people were naked or semi-naked biking in Portland, Ore., and London, England, on the same day as we were.

It's ostensibly about biking as a fun mode of transportation, about the environment, about the damage our car-centric society is wreaking on the world and about the negative associations nudity has with obscenity and poor body image.

And it was about that. But there were a lot of people there who just wanted to get naked on bikes.

For me, the night started at 6 p.m., when I left my heavily Hispanic neighborhood in the midst of loud, honking celebration of Puerto Rican Day. I was wearing shorts I had recently created out of a pair of khakis with a hole in the knee and the same shirt you can see in my "Standing in Front of the World's Largest Boot" profile picture here on WindyCitizen.com.

Underneath were the boxers I soon realized the world would see. Unless, of course, I decided to go totally nude once I got there.

That was a question in my mind as I pedaled to the rendezvous point in Union Park on Ashland, specifically by the statue of Carter Henry Harrison. Would I go nude or would my novelty "Hot Stuff" boxers with the little chili peppers stay on once the shirt and shorts went into my backpack?

I thought about this as I rode by families celebrating, by children playing with sparklers, by churches and by restaurants where elderly couples were looking at each other and realizing their love had lasted time.

I went too far on Ashland and got a little lost. But I straightened myself out shortly.

I got to the statue of Carter Henry, who Wikipedia tells me was Chicago's mayor from 1879 to 1887. There was a cluster of 15 to 20 people around poor Carter. All clothed. All somewhat confused-looking. All casting sideways glances at the cop who was there.

I struck up a conversation with a guy who had a vaguely German accent. He was nice, but as confused as I.

Eventually, someone came up and whispered directions to the real rendezvous point to us. I wrote it down, which later led me to the dismal circumstance of having to repeat it to other wannabe nudists who looked at me as if I knew what I was talking about.

So I rode to the spot. And holy shit.

I won't give the address, but it was what appeared to be an abandoned factory with a gigantic cell phone tower possibly irradiating us. There were a smattering of people - some nude, some semi-nude, most getting body painting done.

There's a strange reckoning that comes when faced with a sea of multi-gendered naked people. At first it's the, holy crap, they're naked! That's some girl's boobs! That's some guy's stuff! That's some girl's stuff!

Then, when you realize that, yeah, they're naked, you start to notice differences. For me, as a guy, it started as "Huh, she has really big ones." Or, "Huh, hers are perky. Or, "Huh, I'm having a conversation with a totally naked pudgy guy named Jeff and we're talking about our respective farmer's tans."

The age range was enormous. I think the most beautiful woman I saw had to be 60 if she was a day. She was completely naked, walking around with her husband. He was a hirsute beast decorated with body paint declaring slogans about stopping the deforestation of his forest.

She was old. Fallen tits and saggy ass, like any meathead description of an older woman would be. But she was lovely. Her front was decorated with an elegant array of leaves and vines, circling her form like grape vines clinging to a weathered but still useful and vibrant wooden frame.

Her back just said "My bush would make a better president."

Boxers on, I told the body paint girl to only do my front, as I would be wearing my backpack. I told her, who I had recently seen adorning her own body with flowers painted via a mirror, to go crazy with it. She balked, so I suggested a big hot pepper, like the ones on my undies. Go with a theme, I thought.

I ran into the person who first told me about the thing. It was a bit awkward, as she only mentioned it absently and hadn't actually thought I would show up. To her credit, she did offer to let me bike with her and her friends, as I didn't know anyone there.

What? You think I want to let my real, true, groomsman-or-bridesmaid-at-my-wedding friends see me in my boxers or less? Come on.

Also, I'm single now. I can do this.

It was a long time of naked waiting. The e-mail said the ride would start at 9 sharp, but there were delays. The same band that played at the Chiditerod played and they were, again, awesome.

People willing to strip down and ride through Chicago are not a breed that easily handles delays and being kept in a cage.

Then, finally, the ride started.

Wow. Just, wow. We were celebrities. Cars stopped. The cops blocked traffic. People yelled and took cell-phone pictures and video. Some looked with disgust, most with hollers, appreciation and high fives as we went by. Despite the organizers' desire to keep everyone at least body-painted over their bits, some people were just riding in the nip.

Some weren't. Some had boxers with chili peppers and had to decide whether to pull them off or not.

We went up Michigan Avenue. We went through Bucktown, Lincoln Park and around and around that damn gas station at Fullerton and Ashland. As I told Diana, I think they might have chosen the route for maximum discomfort for the locals.

I don't care what anyone says. And there were motorists very unhappy we were blocking the roads. But we, or at least I, felt like gods.

There was a party afterwards, but that story comes down to typical party stuff. Music. Impromptu dance lessons from drunk girls. Saw that someone tried to chop through my bike lock but failed. Go, Master Lock. Riding a bike home and realizing how stultifying it was to be forced back into shorts and a button-up.

As for the question you might be asking yourself - did Paul give the crowds "The Full Monty" or "The Whole Nine Yards" or, um, "The Sandlot" - I hate to be a tease.

I must make it, however, a mystery. It is a mystery that will only be solved when you read the last part of this sentence, which is about how my junk was totally flapping in the breeze at points. Sorry, Mom.