Imagine, if you will: it's Friday afternoon, hot and sunny here in Memphis (this afternoon it was cloudy, 82 degrees and muggy - I love the long, hot southern summer). Sonya and I get to the airport an hour before the plane leaves, as advised. There, we find out the plane is still on the ground.

In Chicago.

How 'bout that? Seems there was a battery problem of some sort. They tell us (and assorted other passengers, including a bunch of Florida State students who looked fit enough to lift and carry the plane) that once the plane gets fixed it'll be time for us to go - once it flies from Chicago to Memphis.

I don't know how many of you have spent time in the Memphis airport before. It's functional, I'll give it that. And it's not too hard to navigate. But it's not terribly entertaining, you know? CNN Airport on the tube and lots of bars. So we took the fifteen minute walk up to the main entrance and smoked, then walked back. Sonya read Rolling Stone and I read Vittorio the Vampire, which was every bit as good as Sonya said.

The plane finally took off, and the flight was quick, if a bit bumpy. As a bonus the head flight attendant had a lovely smooth British accent. After the standard reading of the pre-flight stuff (exits, oxygen masks, you know the drill) I turned to Sonya.

"I love her!" I said, "I want to take her this book," I lifted my book, "and get her to read it to me."

Later we caught a glimpse of her through the first-class curtain.

"The face really doesn't match the voice," Sonya said, disappointed.

We got to Chicago, finally. It was six instead of four, like we'd meant, which kind of sucked. But the greatest thrill was next on the agenda:

Trains!

After an interminable walk through O'Hare we finally reached the Blue Line terminal. We got on and embarked on a forty minute ride through Chicago. It was so cool, y'all! I enjoyed the hell out of the public transportation. How sad is that?

Friday night was kind of a wash. It was seven by the time we got to the hotel and checked in. The room, while nice, was very hot. I put the thermostat under sixty and cranked it up to high. The air coming out of the vents was warm and stale. I called the front desk.

"How can we help you, Mr. Williams?" the perky deskclerk asked.

"Yeah, the air conditioner doesn't seem to be working. Is it broken?" I asked.

"Well, Mr. Williams," she said apologetically, "we have one climate control system for the whole building and it's still set to heat, I'm afraid. You can open the windows, though."

I had already opened the freakin' windows. I thanked her and hung up. Sonya and I went out for a big ol' Chicago-style pizza, which was every bit as good as people say. Then we went to bed.

Remember I told you the windows were open? Well, our windows looked out over a narrow street. There were several dumpsters in that street. Every twenty minutes or so throughout the night someone would dump an entire box of empty bottles into the dumpster. Very peaceful.

Saturday morning, looking a bit racoon-eyed but feeling pretty frisky, Sonya and I strolled into the Loop, looking to reenact an important scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

I'll tell you right now: that elevator to the top of the Sears Tower is damn fast. It's the only elevator I've ever been in where you can actually feel it decelerate before it gets to the top. I guess that's to keep it from shooting out the roof and flying into Lake Michigan, huh?

Unfortunately it was kind of hazy Saturday morning. We couldn't see the four states surrounding, but we could see a good bit of Chicago.

"Anything looks peaceful from 1,353 feet," Ferris Bueller once said about Chicago. He was right.

Back at ground level (Sonya kept pointing at sailors and gesturing frantically - finally I said "Hello sailor!" a la Buddy Cole) we strolled towards the Chicago River and came to the Daley Center. I wanted to see - and, if possible, touch - the huge Picasso statue there.

It didn't happen. I bunch of folks were marching around the statue, declaring their support for NATO and calling Milosevic a madern-day Hitler. They'll get no argument from me. However, it did cheese me off a bit that they had to have their rally in front of the one statue I'd come all that way to see. The marching crowd, wary cops and TV camera people made it impossible to get to the statue itself.

We crossed the Chicago River on foot, admiring the Tribune building as we crossed.

"That's not a river," Sonya said scoffingly.

"It's about the size of the drainage ditch by the Mall of Memphis," I observed. You have to understand - we live by the Mississippi. It takes a heap of water (i.e. Lake Ponchartrain, the Gulf of Mexico) to impress folks from the Delta.

The next few hours were spent happily wandering up and down Michigan Avenue, window shopping and - in the case of the Virgin Megastore - actual shopping. Sonya got a fistful of Placebo import singles (she's obsessed with that pretty little man - more on that later) and I got Tori Amos' Little Earthquakes on vinyl, a rare German import.

At the checkout counter, "Bruce" (not his real name) was doing some serious hitting on me, telling me about his Tori Amos collection, which was pretty impressive. Sonya came over, though, and he cooled out pretty quickly.

We discussed this at lunch at an out-of-the-way pub called O'Leary's.

"I saw you were getting chatted up," Sonya said, "I thought I'd save you."

"Which is cool," I responded, "but I think it's actually pretty flattering. Anytime someone hits on you it's a reaffirmation of your desirability. And when you're in a relationship like me, the gender of the person flirting is immaterial. An ego-boost," I took a drink of beer, "is an ego-boost, no matter where it comes from."

"Besides," I concluded, grinning, "he wasn't my type."

After lunch, there was a long and fruitless search for pedal pushers for Sonya. Nada. Zip. Zilch. We went back to the hotel in prepatation for a night o' rock and roll.

Another train ride! The train was packed with folks leaving downtown and heading back out to the suburbs. It's like the trains have cut their way through the city, there's this sheer valley of town all around the trains. There are apartments backed up right against the tracks. I suppose with those you have to measure your need for transportation against the need for quiet. I saw Wrigley Field from the train, too, which tickled the hell out of me for some reason.

We stepped off the train at the Lawrence station, and as the train pulled away behind us I looked down Lawrence towards the Riviera Theatre, where the evening's festivities would take place.

The show was scheduled to start at seven, and we got off the train at five forty-five or so. My vague plan had been to make sure we knew where the theater was, then grab something to eat. The line of angsty teenagers wrapped around the joint shot that plan down. The show was Flick, Placebo and Stabbing Westsward. I have no idea who Flick is - and I still don't after seeing them play. I think Stabbing Westward is mindless noise-rock, doing a poor impersonation of Trent Reznor. Keyboards and distorted vocals do not make you deep, guys. Or talented.

Placebo, though...well, I'll get there.

We joined the line and were promptly patted down. Sonya had the camera on her and they made her throw it away. Otherwise, you would still be waitng for this page to load, there would be so many pictures. We got some beers and went inside.

The Riviera is a cool old place, obviously an old-time ornate movie theater that has since been converted to concert space. We jammed our way up to the stage and proceeded to wait.

The group of teenagers next to us didn't even have the good sense to wait for the house lights to go down before firing up a joint. Theoretically I'm all for pot, but these kids had some horrid midwestern stinkweed that made the throat catch and the eyes water. I was amused when fifteen minutes later one of these girls slithered bonelessly to the crowded floor and all her friends had to carry her away. Sonya and I got an even better spot nearer the stage.

Now, Placebo...see, I'm not nearly so crazy about them as Sonya, but I do believe they're a deeply cool rock band. I like 'em a lot. So it was thrill when they came out and cranked right into Scared of Girls, a stomping tune on their latest album. The crowd ate it up, pogoing and surging about.

I'm always apprehensive about trios, and Sonya feels the same. Three-piece groups often seem to be punched up in the studio and their live sound comes across as terribly thin. Not Placebo. They were trying to push the crowd out the back wall. Mission accomplished, guys.

They also blew a fuse in the middle of their third song, which was amusing. The sound went and the lights on their Marshall stacks went out, one by one. It was disheartening, but the problem was fixed and the band played on.

I was more than ready to get away from the mass of hot children packed against the stage once Placebo's set ended. (We weren't the oldest ones there by any means, but in our little part of the crowd I certainly felt mature.) The air outside was blessedly cool. I got my first look at the neighborhood; it was apparently the place to see and be seen with the Hispanic community. Sonya wanted an autograph from Placebo, so we found ourselves behind the Riviera, hanging with the rest of the black hair/black clothes crowd. We got more than a few strange looks from the hombres in their lowriders. Some of them had cucaracha horns, which were just too cool. I'm getting one for my truck next week.

So we were hanging out and struck up a conversation with Katie, a willowly blonde from Minneapolis. We talked to her for, oh, two hours or so. She was with a little group of friends who were off watching the stage door.

"It's lovely to visit with you, Katie," I told her, "but I certainly don't want to keep you from your friends."

She shrugged, "it's cool. They're probably just talking about how they wish Brian had worn a dress."

I jerked a finger towards Sonya. "She said the same thing a few minutes ago!"

A kindred soul behind a concert hall. My people are everywhere! Later, Katie let me take (or try to take) a picture of Sonya standing with Brian, the pretty little lead singer from Placebo. He kept thrusting his hands towards the camera and flipping me off, so I don't know if any of the pictures turned out or not. Katie is supposed to send us some copies. So hi, Katie, if you're out there. You're too cool!

[Sonya wants me to note here that Brian is a prima donna and a diva a and was just fucking with me. He was fucking with everybody. It didn't seem malicious to her. Or me, either. Musicians are just odd sometimes.]

Standing on the train platform at midnight, looking down on the bustling neighborhood, we were trying to decide if we should stop at a joint Katie had recommended or go on back to the hotel and try and find something nearby. At another theater under the tracks I suddenly heard someone yelling.

"What you lookin' at, boy?"

And then a beat later

"You afraid of a big dick, bee-otch?"

I didn't laugh out loud, and I didn't look, but I was sure as hell tickled at that.

Our departure Sunday morning was quick, dirty and tiring. Somewhere along the way I hurt my right ankle Saturday night and each step was torture on the way to the train station. The long walk through O'Hare wasn't fun, either. And the train ride itself was very gloomy. Chicago looked cloudy, damp and gray. It had been beautiful on the ride Saturday, the afternoon sun golden and warm. But I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that town in the winter.

To make a long story short ("Too late!" I hear you all saying) the trip was great. A weekend is nowhere near enough time to see Chicago, I tell you. I need to go back.

And it must have been a good trip, 'cause Sonya has been walking like Torgo since we got back and I have tendonitis - and a possible broken bone - in my foot and a sore throat that feels like I swallowed a hot coal. When you come back from some place sick and injured you know you had fun.

Just one more quick thing:

I went to the doctor in West Memphis today to get the aforementioned diagnosis of my foot. On my way back I drove by - but not through - my old neighborhood. The unmistakeable stench of broken and backed-up sewer lines hit me.

You know, I didn't know until I left home that that smell wasn't the natural smell of warm weather. I don't know why the sewers in the old 'hood have such a hard time when it's warm, but as far back as I can remember that was the smell when the weather turned warm and school was about to get out. It was a natural and integral part of the thick, humid summer air. The foul smell of human filth, to me, is pleasantly evocative.

Isn't that pathetic?

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