DAMN
What an awful way to start the week. Both Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni died yesterday.

GOODBYE
Ingmar Bergman

KEEP IT TIGHT
The summer rain has made the black streets misty; my morning walk progresses with the smooth fits of a dream. Cool wet droplets land on the crown of my head and head down over the backs of my ears. The air is thick and sweet as low gray clouds race southward over the city and between downtown's black towers. Chicago moves forward into the secret corners of summer, where anything can happen at any moment. I long to be stuck outside. I want to hear it coming, whatever it is.

DEMOCRACY II
Now with 90% less pore-clogging oversight!™

The Boy King says: "Let that good man have New Legs!"

MAINLY IN DES PLAINES
The suburbs are having all the fun.

It was supposed to rain in the city. Good, clean, mid-week rain. Alas, it never came. And now the morning clouds have evaporated, leaving the sky bright, naked, the sidewalks warm and awnings dusty. My black umbrella languishes in the dark recesses of my messenger bag. How can we grow without water?

I must have tweaked my back over the weekend. Maybe it happened as I was lifting spirits during Saturday's kickball playoffs. We lost our first game and thereafter drank with relish. We sprawled out in the grass as the winds whipped the field into a cone of dust all around us. The hot sun browned my neck and arms deeply, but the radiation had me reeling by nightfall. I made tracks for home and there relaxed—the couch a familiar womb, the remote loose in my hand.

I need the rain now. I need to feel its cool summer vapor. I need to feel it in my pants.

VARIOUS MATTERS
There are a million things I could be doing, and this is not one of them. I am reading "Switch Bitch." I am listening to This Heat. I am looking things up on Wikipedia.

Last night, the kickball team was again victorious, as victory oozed from every orifice. We shall prevail in Saturday's playoffs. We shall ooze more victory than anyone thought possible. The Chicago Department of Parks & Recreation will need to mobilize a HazMat team to clean up all the victory before it coagulates in the summer sun.

Tonight, I will drink wine and listen to Toumani Diabate at Pritzker.

I enjoy drinking with other humans. I do.

ON CUYLER
On Saturday, Lauren and I found the greatest apartment of all time. It's difficult to properly explain how huge and important this is to the future of humanity. I tried to draw a diagram, but couldn't find paper big enough to do justice to the sprawling floor plan.

Waiting to move is going to be hellish—we have another month and a half to go.

THE POWER OF PURSUASION
I can't believe this shit.

And I'm not the only one.

ETA: Bill O'Reilly is nuttier than a bowlful of macaroons? That I can believe.

Oh for fuck's sake enough already!

OY.