Yesterday called for an earlier wake-up than usual as I was asked to come in for a Q&A at a class at Walter Payton high school. Once a year teacher Doug O'Roark offers a seminar course in which he discusses, as far as I can tell, the history of punk (where the heck were these classes when I was {enrolled} in high school?). Among the required reading are a few selections from Punk Is A Four-Letter Word.
It may not surprise you to learn that I was late, but I kind of figured that the kids would've been pretty disappointed to see a musician actually showing up on time, so no big deal.
Most of the kids asked good questions and had obviously read the stuff and paid attention to what we were discussing. It was a bit bizarre to me, naturally, seeing as how I had attended high school so infrequently in my youth, and was virtually never prepared in class, much less interested. So it warmed my heart a little bit to witness obviously bored, sullen looks on some of the faces, and the occasional whispering and jabbing.
As Pixie had travelled with me to ensure I didn't get lost (I'm sorry to say that anything south of North Ave. might as well be downtown Bangkok to me) I treated her to lunch at the honestly named Thai Restaurant on Madison in Forest Park - one of the only Thai restaurants in the area I haven't tried out. The Pad Thai was a little greasy, but the red curry with chicken was outstanding, and the fried tofu was the best I'd had in a long time. I don't intend to digress into a restaurant review, because if I did, I'd be telling you about the pricey-and-worth-every-penny New Rebozo on Madison, and Khyber Pass on Lake - one of the finest Indian restuarants I've ever tried - and Grape Leaves on Oak Park, and New Pot on Lake, etc. The truth is, we can afford to eat out so rarely that when we do I like to pretend (to myself of course) that I'm a food critic for the Trib and that it's my sworn duty to be tough but fair as I hurl the bombastic kudos and stinging barbs with seeming abandon (again, only in my head).
I'd like to say that a few more paragraphs on the book were completed but they weren't. I did, however, stare intently at the first page of the first chapter for 3 or 4 minutes. But there was a cold Miller High Life with my name on it so I poured a glass and settled down to fool around with my new songs for a couple of hours. The songs are, for all intents and purposes, done, but these ones both have variations on the vocal lines near the end (I always seem to write in pairs) that are designed to sound spontaneous and emotion-y (which they kind of were {spontaneous, I mean} and are {emotion-y, that is}) so I've been trying to perfect what comes where while making it all sound completely natural.
My own home-made chili (I give it 4 forks!) made an early evening appearance as I cooked up a batch and brought it to my sweetheart at work so we could have dinner together on her break. By the time I got home and washed the dishes it was time to knock off for the day.
I've been roped into a late afternoon babysitting gig and a large pile of laundry beckons so I won't be able to get out to write today. Let's see if I can resist the allure of checking my e-mail fifty times or so, and Googling silly stuff in the name of research and fact-checking, and actually get some writing done.