So I was riding my bike downtown the other day. It was a gorgeous day for a ride. It was 80 degrees and sunny. Even though the UV index was high for mid-September and there was a 30% chance of rain, the air was crisp and cool. There was a touch of late summer humidity, the kind that will soak a shirt if the wind ain't blowing right. The sky was a vibrant true blue with puffy white cumulus clouds weaving through the skyscrapers. As I stopped at a red light, I watched them form familiar shapes. One looked just like a pickle, a second looked just like a car, and a third resembled Mayor Daley going down on Alderman Toni Preckwinkle. Seriously, there were jowls, and lips, and the Mayor's tongue almost touching the Alderman's clitoris.
I tell you these details, not because they are important to the story, but I feel responsible as a storyteller to paint a picture for you, so you can create the visuals in your mind.
So, the mayor is chomping away, and just as the Alderman is about to come, I notice a restaurant on the corner, the Bull & the Bear. It's on the corner of Hubbard, and, well I don't remember the cross-street, its not important, but if you've been there, you know. I notice this waitress weaving her way through the outside patio tables.
Oh, I guess I forgot to mention that there was an outside patio.
So this pert, little blonde thing, probably in her early 20's, is waiting tables at the Bull & the Bear. And what I notice about this girl is the uniform, its uber-cash, comfy jeans, sneakers, and the Bull & the Bear tank-top.
It's the tank top that really catches my eye. Now, this is a grey tank top with an eye-searing lime green Bull & Bear logo on the front, now I don't really know what the logo looks like so you'll have to create that yourself. I'm guessing it somehow works in a bull and a bear. You create it, have fun. And as the waitress turns to go inside the restaurant I see a slogan emblazoned on her back that reads:
“Living the Dream”
Now, I've heard this phrase countless times, as I'm sure we all have. 'Living the Dream'.
I love phrases like this because they're almost 99% of the time rendered immediately false simply by the people who use them.
So this girl is wearing this tank top that tells the world that she is Living the Dream.
Living. The. Dream.
This is her dream?
So I'm to believe that back in '93, somewhere in rural Kansas, she's a 4-year old at the kitchen table coloring in a Rainbow Brite coloring book, and her mom's firing up a Newport off the filter of the last one. And she jams the filter of the last one into one of those tartan bean bag ashtrays and that spills burnt filters and ashes and old pieces of chewed Hubba Bubba onto the dirty linoleum. And Arsenio, the 3-legged dog comes skittering up and starts devouring the butts. And the washing machine is off-balance and its banging around in the background, almost hypnotically, drowning out the Home Improvement rerun that's blaring from the Zenith in the living room. And her mom looks down at young Kourtney and sighs.
Oh, I forgot to mention that her name was Kourtney.
That's not true, I don't really know what the waitresses' name was, but for this story I'm calling her Kourtney, or Kandace, or Kailey, Kiley, Whatever they were naming girls back then, something with a 'K'.
And young Kourtney, who is the perfect child, warm, and polite, and sweet, with her strawberry-blond curls and her sea blue eyes, that look just like her father's, god rest him, is coloring perfectly within the lines.
Perfect little Kourtney, with a world of possibilities ahead of her. It's the 90's for god's sake, nothing was impossible back then. Kourtney looks up into her mama's eyes and says:
“Momma, momma. You know what I want to be, momma. You know what I want to be when I grow up momma.”
And her mother gazes down at her, her eyes brimming with tears, and says:
“Kort, you can be anything you want to be in the whole wide world. If you dream it you can be it. You can be an astronaut, or a professional basketball player, or even the President if you want.”
“I know momma, and I want to be, my dream is...”
“Tell momma, and together we can make it come true.”
"My dream is to move to the big city of Chicago...”
“The city of dreams”
“And become a cocktail waitress, but not just any cocktail waitress, I want to work the lunch shifts at a downtown watering hole where handsome day traders drink expensive martinis. Where maybe, just maybe, if I'm pretty enough, I can get one of those big money board of exchange guys to take me out to a club on a Friday night. And he'll be handsome and tall and he'll fill me full of cocaine, momma.
And then, after I blow him and two of his friends in the bathroom, he'll kick me out of his really nice BMW 7-series for puking all over his leather interior."
I forgot to mention he drives a BMW 7-series with leather interior.
“And then, the next morning when you call me, and I wake up with my mouth on fire from all the herpes I lapped up the previous night, and you ask me how am I doing?
I'm gonna light up a Newport, just like you, momma, and I'm gonna say: I'm living the dream, momma.
I'm living the dream."
1. Action, action, action!! Nobody read the comics about the Norse God of Thunder and his magic hammer for it's wit. Thor is a warrior. Let him war.
