Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of March 17, 2019
According to a New York Times and Morning Consult poll, parents are so involved with their children’s lives that they’re killing the kids’ life skills. We don't want this for Harrison. And this is why now that he's one year old, he'll be wiping his own ass. And mine. Furthermore, he'll be able to rig a sailboat and navigate the health insurance marketplace by kindergarten.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of March 10, 2019
• Being a white male without student loans is not Bad Privilege. Having your parents bribe your way onto a collegiate rowing team is Bad Privilege.
• Speaking of… Lori Loughlin surrendering to the FBI would make a great plot point of a Lori Loughlin Hallmark Channel made-for-TV movie.
Our Weekend with Michael Jackson and R. Kelly
Katie came with a record player. I had planned on buying one for myself just about the time we got serious, so when we moved in together, hers became mine, and I was Don Hall-excited about it. I could finally dust off my vinyl collection and give the old discs a spin. The first one I chose was my original pressing of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. At about the third track, the Paul McCartney duet “The Girl is Mine,” Katie asked, “Who is this?”
“Who is this!?” I responded, astounded and slightly confused. “It’s Michael Jackson. It’s Thriller — the second best-selling album of all time.”
“Oh, I don’t like Michael Jackson.”
I immediately questioned our entire relationship and my taste in women. “What!? How can you not like Michael Jackson?
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of March 3, 2019
Few things are funnier than a hysterical person. The R. Kelly interview on CBS This Morning was the best standup comedy I’ve seen since watching Nanette.
Fall & Spring Semesters
My inbox was often empty.
No new messages.
I checked too frequently, never giving it a chance to fill up, never giving my family and friends a chance to think about me.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of February 24, 2019
Personalities can be awful when there’s more than one in a room.
It’s Election Day in Chicago: A Deconstructed Love Story
It’s election day in Chicago, which means it’s the day citizens of this Third Coast Second City bring out their dead to partake in the American right to screw themselves at the polls.
Since its incorporation on March 4, 1837, Chicago has been the place for people who want to be punished. There are the winters, the Cubs and the Bears, the Daley Family, the pot holes, and, of course, the crime. And by crime, I mean the politicians and the police. Yes, the city has its positives, too. There’s the lake and its shoreline, the architecture, the Blackhawks, Stephanie Izard, the excitement of not knowing whether the improv show you’re about to see is going to be incredible or give you cause to wish for a swift and vicious cancer to eat you and every player on stage alive.
Chicago, we don’t deserve better — we’ve done this to ourselves for almost two hundred years — but we should want better. And if we’re as tough as we brag to be, we can have it.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of February 17, 2019
• Forgiveness is not valued enough. And too often, it’s not even attempted. And that’s why we’re doomed.
• I feel a crushing amount of guilt and regret for thinking that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an attractive person. I feel the same way about Ivanka Trump.
Letting Go of the Things We Love
Gun to head, I’d have told you I was a leg man over a boobs guy and meant it. So much so, that in my early-twenties, after talking about it for years, I finally stole a mannequin leg from a mall department store. Okay, I didn’t steal it, my friend, Chris Gallant stole it. We were walking out of Dillards (maybe it was Robinsons-May), and I was saying, again, how badly I wanted to steal one of those legs. Chris, tired of the same old talk and no action, grabbed a leg decked out in DKNY thigh-high pantyhose just before exiting through the automatic doors. We barely picked up our pace as we headed to the car.
“Here’s your fucking leg,” he said.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of February 10, 2019
Valentine’s Day isn’t a dumb holiday. It’s a day of self-help. Valentine’s Day gives you the opportunity to manage your anxiety, pride, and feelings of loneliness. And according to Brian Sweeney, it’s the best day to eat ass and gargle nut.
Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas: Advice from a Former Las Vegan to the Valley’s Newest
At the time of this writing, my friend and former Chicago-based poet, model, and musician, Dana Jerman is residing in her new home in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her husband, co-editor of Literate Ape, longtime storyteller mainstay, and man with a complicated relationship with his feet, Don Hall is just three days out from loading up the last vestiges of their Chicago life — forty years between the two of them — into his Prius to make the drive west and begin a new adventure in a part of America Joseph Smith once referred to as a “great place to do anal with child brides and legally take money from the Jews.”
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of February 3, 2019
Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is an opportunity. Knowledge is cunning.
Woke Super Bowl Commercials
Volkswagen – “Schindler’s Car”
Popular VW models transform into one another through the decades bringing us to today.
[V.O. – MAN]
A lot has changed in eighty years.
The way we live. The way we drive. The way we don’t kill Jews.
The all new 2019 Volkswagen Jetta. It’s not a Jew killer.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of January 27, 2019
It’s too soon to write Howard Schultz off as yet another oligarch or self-serving rich pud like Ross Perot with a self-righteous taste for the presidency. Just as I think it’s too soon to think that AOC is the Second Coming of Christ. Give them time. Maybe things’ll play out different than we assume. Maybe.
A Life Lesson from the Frozen Mailman
Perhaps he turned down my offer to warm up, thaw his beard, and revive his nose because he knew, as too many of us never learn or learn too late, that once you stop something you set out to achieve, it’s nearly impossible to start again.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of January 20, 2019
Having privilege is not inherently a bad thing. It does not define who you are. What you do with that privilege does. Do you use it to help people or hurt people? Bobby Kennedy is not Donald Trump and Donald Trump is no Bobby Kennedy. (Baby brother Teddy was no Bobby either when he used his privilege to let a dead girl get waterlogged in his sunken car.)
Buying Whores for Chuck Berry and a Threat from Jerry Lee Lewis
“You work for the radio station?” he asked again.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Lewis. I’m Dr. Dave Maxwell. What can I help you with?” Little Richard walked past us, and he, too, looked frail and worn down. The Killer glared at him as he passed. The Innovator didn’t seem to notice. Jerry Lee turned his gaze back at me, his eyes smaller now, his face taut with rage.
“Can you do me a favor, boy?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t let that niggah touch my pianah.” He and his two men went on their way.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of January 13, 2019
Knowledge isn’t power. Knowledge is an opportunity.
Is Marketing the Root of All Evil?
Gillette doesn’t feel like a sales pitch. It feels genuine. It is a marketing success. But also, “Buy our razors because Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s ain’t woke like we are.” There’s just no escaping it, for-profit companies need our money, and they’ll do anything to get it. In this case, Gillette did it right.
An Impeached Trump is a More Powerful Trump
We’re not just facing Trump’s wrath or the democratic trouble it will incite. We have to be mindful of the die-hard Trump supporters.
Andy was good at his job. And for a nine-month-old baby, he was really good at it.