16 Comments
User's avatar
James Finn Garner's avatar

Your tie could be used in an ad for a Brazilian wax parlor. Before/after.

Next time you're in Chicago, I'm taking you to the Green Mill Lounge, which still has the most glorious sound in town. I used to work directly above the Billy Goat, in what most people called the Bob Newhart Building, from the opening shots of his first sitcom. Yes, you could smell it all day. It was glorious.

Expand full comment
Michael Gerber's avatar

You are also one of the things I like most about Chicago.

Were you a copywriter Jim? What was in that building?

Expand full comment
James Finn Garner's avatar

I was an editor for a branch of the National Association of Realtors. So when you want to know the cost method for determining the value of an airplane hangar or a retirement village, I'm your man. Location location location.

It's where I learned to use wax rollers, and also met my wife. And thanks to a tenacious boss, learned to edit well and when to use "Last" and "Past".

Expand full comment
Michael Gerber's avatar

Ps YES to Green Mill. My best chicago music experience was listening to jazz in some hotel on south Michigan avenue. The Roosevelt, is there such a place?

Expand full comment
James Finn Garner's avatar

Yes, the Roosevelt is there. Or it could've been the Blackstone, which is much older and more ornate. Both have venues. The Green Mill hosts, Saturdays at 3, my favorite show in the entire city, The Paper Machete. New topical comedy every week, hot music, cramped bathroom, and the occasional national comedian slumming it. Smart, ruthless, hilarious.

Expand full comment
Michael Gerber's avatar

It was the Blackstone!!

Expand full comment
James Finn Garner's avatar

Home of the original "smoke-filled room," which in this case nominated Harding for president.

Expand full comment
Michael Gerber's avatar

The room where it happens…you just can’t see anything

Expand full comment
Jeremy's avatar

I would read the heck out of a Mike Gerber regular column. I mean, I have so far.

Expand full comment
Michael Gerber's avatar

Oh thank you! This comes from one of the most entertaining people I’ve ever met.

Expand full comment
Darrel Plant's avatar

Did I ever mention the time Mike Royko ripped off one of my newspaper columns?

https://moshplant.com/prob/prob02/margie_mike_me.html

Expand full comment
Michael Gerber's avatar

Oh god I have to read this!

Expand full comment
Darrel Plant's avatar

Just for background, Margie Boulé was a Portland TV morning show host and "personality" for years, then wrote a column for the Oregonian newspaper for two decades. I got in trouble with her once a couple years into her stint there because I wrote a snotty letter about a piece of hers complaining she couldn't find a typewriter with an American-layout keyboard so she could do her columns during her annual summer in France. Being young and stupid, I wrote it at work, either on a piece of store stationery or in a store envelope, because she called my boss and tried to get me fired. So it wasn't just a general concern that she'd ended up with my op-ed in her hands.

Expand full comment
E.R. Flynn's avatar

I agree with you on Chicago.

I once spent a weekend there once in 1994 visiting friends. It was a year out from my divorce and I was still technically insane, as all divorces tend to induce. Anyhow in the course of 48 hours: I drove off from a fancy hotel parking garage and realized I skipped out on paying for parking when I saw the lot attendant chasing after me in my rear view mirror; I found a punk rock show at a bowling alley(?) where I got loaded out of my mind; then got lost drunk driving around for hours trying to find my way back to my hotel; I ended up sleeping in a 7/11 parking lot until I got woken up by a cop. (thankfully the booze wore off by then.); Then after finding my way back to my fleabag hotel, I got kicked out because the insane Korean hotel owner thought I was dealing drugs...or was a Satanist...I couldn't tell since he was yelling too fast.

"You get out! You get out! I call Cops!" was all I could really understand.

I spent the next half day looking for another low budget fleabag hotel to spend the night in until amscraying to a flight out of that thick-pizza hellscape the following morning.

I've since made it a personal mission to never again take random trips while under the psychosis and mental damage of matrimonial destruction.

Expand full comment
Michael Gerber's avatar

I freely admit that the problem is me. Too many people like that town for it not to be excellent. But I will say that the El tried to kill me (I survived).

Expand full comment
E.R. Flynn's avatar

I should have written a disclaimer. My view of the town at the time was seen through the lens of my own personal insanity, which should by no means be anyone's measure of an honest evaluation.

Expand full comment