Wendy McClure

Author and Professional Obsessive.

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Oh, I guess this is just a list of stuff I hate!

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The sickness is a thing of the past, but the 15,000-word-long freelance project I took on for February is still in the present, at least for a couple more days. Maybe by then it will be spring and the world’s surface will return to normal again, and it’ll be just like those nice maps and globes where all the wet parts are clearly marked blue, and the beige parts are dry enough to walk on and are not some filthy medley of concrete and puddle and mud and total LUMPY ICEFUCK. Yes, that is the scientific term, “lumpy icefuck,” for the lumpy fucking exoskeleton of ice that covers the ground this time of year. Lately, whenever my car is parked on the left side of the street, and thus with the driver’s side next to the parkway/expanse-of-lumpy-icefuck, I have to stagger across like a drunken sea hag and then try to fall softly against the side of my car. Ugh.

I need to interrupt this rant to point out that I will be doing this Interview Show at the Hideout on Friday at 6:30. I will sit on a couch and Mark Bazer will interview me and it will be funny but maybe also thoughtful! I will get drink tickets. You will probably be able to tell I get drink tickets! Please come!

Okay, back to hating the ground. And late winter. And laundry, and overheated rooms, and drafty rooms, and sidewalk salt in places that are not sidewalks, and FOX Network, and the City of Chicago for having only a pretend recycling program, and people who call themselves “foodies,” and faux new wave, and being too tired to hate all the things that deserve to be hated, because DAMMIT.

Follow-ups in case you care

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1.) I am almost not sick anymore! I bet if I sleep another sixteen hours tonight I will have this thing licked. I haven’t been outside for four days, save for three hours on Saturday when we went to see There Will Be Blood, an experience which did indeed drink my milkshake so much I had to go home and sleep for most of Sunday. And today, too, thanks to the dead Presidents.

2.) If you hadn’t gotten enough audio interview of me last week, you can also hear me on the KCRW show Good Food with Evan Kleiman this week. The original episode aired on Saturday but you can listen to it online or in podcast form. The interview is about Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan and you can hear me do my very best NPR voice.

3.) The little bitty grocery store I lamented in this entry has returned! Reopened! Reportedly a little spookier than before, but whatever! The Bounty bars have yet to come back though, and while I am grateful to the several of you who offered to send some, I think we’re going to wait until we’re just a little more desperate.

4.) I forgot what 4 was going to be, so it must be bedtime.

F is for Funny and Fixx

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Hey, there’s this thing tonight:

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(If you don’t know where the Hideout is and you can’t read the tiny print, it’s at 1354 W. Wabansia. And if you take a taxi and the cabbie is wondering whether you really want to go down that crappy back-alley-looking street, you do. Trust me.)

And if you miss me tonight, you can catch me again this Thursday night at The Fixx, at 3053 N. Sheffield. Double booked, baby!

If you come to either event you will get to see my new head. For months my friend Richard had been telling me to make an appointment at his salon to get something done about my color, and for months I kept putting it off, because my natural hair was a perfectly agreeable shade of All-Bran, and why mess with that? But finally last week I put my head in his hands and he gave me hair the color of deep sultry mystery, and also a new cut, and also special new crime-fighting powers.

The only problem was that I couldn’t wash my hair for nearly two days, which meant that my head was even dirtier than it had been the other weekend, back when I camped out in the middle of Michigan Duney Nowhere, because there I could at least jump in the lake and/or drink my unclean feelings away. It goes without saying I did both of plenty. It helped that both nights we were there the sky was clear and ridiculously full of stars and there were gorgeous meteor showers to keep me from dwelling on the showers I wasn’t having. But my unwashed days are over for now, which I guess is helpful to know if you’re coming to see me tonight or Thursday. Smell ya later, folks!

Quick and dirty in NYC

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1. I’m in New York right now for a very very short visit, which will be interrupted by an even shorter side trip to Boston to read at the Great Scott with Jami and Janice. Come see us! (And I’ll be back in NYC next month to see people I haven’t gotten a chance to see this time, which is pretty much everyone.)

2. The winner of the spelling bee I judged Friday night at the Book Cellar was someone who reads this blog, a woman named Rachel with a beautiful buttery leather jacket. I would have let her win on this alone but she won fair and square. I would tell you the winning word but then I would have to spell it.

3. Last night we were in a cab and the cabbie showed us a backpack that a stripper left in his cab and inside were the most amazing shoes ever. There are pictures. You’ll see them soon. Update! Photos here.

When Chocolate Rabbit Howls*

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It was Sunday morning and there was a solid chocolate bunny. “You go first,” said Chris. So I bit the ears off. When I was younger I had certain rules regarding the ethical treatment of candy animals but this time I didn’t even snap the head off until after Chris had chomped the feet off and handed it back to me. I ate the head and passed it to Chris. Chris took another bite from his site and passed it back to me. It was a Dove bunny and it tasted holy. Then it tasted whole-milky, which of course is still really freaking good. By the fourth or fifth bite it was humming with sugar, and eating it was a little like tasting a 9-volt battery, a very very very very very delicious battery.

Around that time I whispered, “Should we stop?” Only half the bunny was gone. We were getting to the part of the bunny where you really have to gnaw. It was only going to get uglier from here. We ran into the kitchen and buried the carcass in the trash. “Oh God, hurry,” I heard myself saying. That was our Easter.

I’m finally beginning to accept all this almost-springness—even though it’s cold out there is sunlight and birdie noises and vague bits of green in the trees, and I’ll take that. I’ve stopped waiting for the sixty-degree weather to come back. I get it, Spring: you are a big flake. Maybe I’ll just start riding my bike anyway.

Some of you saw this map thingy I put up on Flickr a few weeks ago, where I traced a bicycle route to work using as much of the local off-road trail system as possible. It’s too far to do every day, but I can’t believe how much I want to try it. I bought a bike about three years ago but I never quite got the hang of riding. It’s a lot different from the way things were back when I was twelve and was way more scared of drugs (hello, I had just read Go Ask Alice) than traffic. But I think the trails nearby will be a good place to start, plus my legs might be stronger than they used to be, since I’ve been doing Weights & Hates since November, and all those (hateful) squats and lunges (of loathing) have to be good for something, right? That’s what I hope at least.

You Chicago people are going to come see me judge at the Spelling Bee at the Book Cellar this Friday, right? (Bonus: find the spelling error in that listing!) You Boston people are going to come see me and Jami and Janice and Hallelujah the Hills at the Great Scott NEXT Friday, yes? Good.

*Does anyone remember that book? And how it was made into a TV movie? With Shelley Long? Playing a woman with 92 personalities? Chris did not know until I told him and then it was like Christmas morning.

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