There's an article in the Marketplace section of yesterday's Wall Street Journal about how The Arctic Monkeys, England's newest and greatest hype, has failed to meet any American crossover expectations. Ostensibly, this came as a shock to radio producers on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly after months of cloying reviews from one British (and American) paper after another. One magazine even had the cajones to claim that the new Arctic Monkey's record was more important than the Clash's "London Calling."

Their debut album, "Whatever People Say I am, That's What I'm Not"--clearly not directed at the editors at Mojo—only sold 34,000 copies stateside—less than 10% of the 360,000 unloaded on our salivating British brethren. Although the Wall Street Journal focused primarily on the business-side of the deal, this is the Wall Street Journal after all, the article did cite cultural and linguistic barriers as determents to state side success. After all, who in the United States wants to listen to some Limey brat warble about "tracky bottoms?" Please. We Yanks need something we can relate to, like 50 Cent.

And let's not forget how grating that whiny English accent becomes after fifteen minutes. Don't these kids know that in order to obtain real success in America they need to lose the ol' "nippa & chippa"? Look at folks like Elvis Costello, Manfred Man and Graham Parker. Hell, listen to "Yesterday" and find me any trace of Liverpool inflection. It's all but non-existent.

Maybe it's just me, but it's that damned accent that keeps me from watching Kiera Knigthly films. That and the fact that she's always calling me at 2 in the morning for a booty call. Kiera, seriously. It's over. Move on, sister.

To be quite honest, I don't understand why all this cross-cultural confusion has come as such of a shock to studio heads. With the exception of the two British invasions—the one from the 60's being very much American inspired, as John Lennon himself has pointed out—British music has never translated well here. Case in point: The Smiths. Here's a band that practically ruled England for a couple years during the mid-80's but a quick Google search indicates that they never even broke the top 40 here. Why?

Now I like the Smiths so I'm not sure I can answer that, but a few reasons do pop to mind. They paraded their Britishness so gratingly, and so explicitly that it often carried the weight of jingoism. Despite Morrisey's anti-nationalist rhetoric, this does tend to turn people off.  Ask Toby Kieth why his albums don't sell in Manchester. Or maybe it's because so many Smiths songs sounds like they're streaming from an old Zenith television set somewhere below a CTA Brown-Line station. Whatever the reason may be, The Smiths and their Arctic offspring lack the Gravitas needed to make it here in America. And let's be honest, that's where the money is.

But with a lackluster American debut already in the bank, industry questions about the Arctic Monkey's future—whether they should focus on the UK or give America another shot—will almost certainly grow. How can it not? Who knows, maybe they can come back with an album that doesn't sound like a reject from the "Trainspotting" soundtrack. Good luck to them on that.

Oh, and good luck on Saturday Night Live, mates.

I didn't catch most of the Oscars but I liked what I saw.

John Stewart was funny enough, I suppose. The musical numbers were only moderately tedious, and Michael Moore wasn't there, so at least we could all watch without waiting for the other shoe to drop. There's something to be said for that.

Not that it matters by now anyhow because no one I know can recall any of the winners, save of course for that "Hard Out Here for a Pimp" group. What's their name? Whatever.

Oh, and it only had the second lowest ratings ever. Whew!

But here's what bugs me: why are winners rushed off the stage three seconds after they pick up their award? Not to give Hollywood any more credit than it's due, but the Oscars is its night after all, so why shouldn't they be allowed to incoherently ramble for a bit? Is it so that those of we in the Midwest can watch the news at 10:30 instead of 11? Give me a break. Reese Witherspoon worked hard to get that pretty. At least give her a few minutes to make a fool of herself.

And besides, does it really matter whether the Oscars are three hours and twenty minutes or three hours and fifty minutes? After the 3-hour mark it all becomes an LSD hallucination anyway.

Since when is throwing a Muppet into a commercial clever advertising?

It now appears that Kermit and the gang have become the puppets of last resort when fresh, young advertising executives who haven't done enough coke yet, run out of ideas.

Boss: What can we say about Pizza Hut, Jenkins?

Jenkins: Gee, I don't know boss. That it doesn't taste like cardboard?

Boss: Right. But how do we sell that to consumers?

Jenkins: Hmmm…That's a tough one boss.

Both:  MISS PIGGY!

Jenkins: And if that doesn't work, my two-month old daughter is available!

Boss: Jenkins, you're a genius.

We don't talk about it much, but every Jew in America has an Ash Wednesday story. Kind of like how every Chinese restaurant in America has a Christmas story and every gentile— in the north Chicago-land area, anyway—has a Yom Kippur story. Most of these tales of ethnic bewilderment adhere to a similar albeit extensive story line. Basically, it involves running into a member of another religion/ethnicity/ect at their most spiritually exposed and being unable to process it. Call it a momentary loss of liberality.

Hmm..I should probably back up a minute here. Not every Jew has an Ash Wednesday story, just those I've discussed this with. Heck, I'm sure many Hindus can also attest to an Ash Wednesday story or two, let alone all the world's Protestants. So it's not just us. No "Zionist Secrets Revealed" here. Sorry, Ms. Zerbisias.

Although, I think the Jewish reaction to Ash Wednesday represents something unique in the modern "us & them" ethos that keeps the world spinning. Whenever I see a Catholic with an ash cross on his head, I am overwhelmed by two contradictory feelings, both taking turns at predominance. Either I am grateful or I am concerned.  

Maybe it's the notion, however subconscious, that on this date some two millennia ago, our status as "killers" was sealed and shouts for our slaughter given international legitimacy. Not that I consider Ash Wednesday a call for the defensive. On the contrary, Ash Wednesday is perhaps the only holiday in the world which, almost by default, forces people of differing faiths to understand, though never fully accept, the things that divide them. We tread carefully though, because for one day a year, it's literally in our face.

Still, all inter-faith circle-jerking aside, real feelings of anxiety percolate every Ash Wednesday and it's not by accident that I spend most of that day avoiding eye contact with certain individuals. Those ashes means something to non-Catholics in general and to Jews in particular. In many ways they signifiy the day the first shoe finally dropped.

I'm exaggerating, surely, in today's America it's really very easy to be a Jew. None of us are concerned about being refused access to the Bryn Mawher country club or being forced to live (or not to live) in certain neighborhoods. There are no pogroms, no fever-swamp "Elders of Zion" kind of stuff, and besides the occasion kook professor or far left/far right zealot, few people here seem out to "get us." I'm not saying anti-Semitism doesn't exist, just read Pat Buchanan or Alexander Cockburn (the later wrote an entire book about how blaming the Jews for X,Y or Z while openly advocating the wholesale destruction of their state isn't at all anti-Semitic, and anyone who says so is just tying to stymie "legitimate criticism of Israel." A rather funny read in a pathetically self-delusional kind of way.) as evidence of that.  I myself have experienced it only twice, and the second time was more ignorant than malicious.

Yet still, part of being a Jew is an acceptance of the "otherness" innate in ourselves and other religions. Part of that "otherness" remains the often violent gulch that twins our mutual pasts; and nothing exemplifies this better than ash on the forehead. This is in contrast to the "oneness" proclaimed by Eastern faiths, a philosophy that sounds nice in theory but as a Jew, I simply cannot abide. This is nothing new, by the way, Jewish thinkers have long drawn distinctions between "oneness" and "otherness" so don't think I'm being terribly original here. Nevertheless, I still believe these concepts must overlap and conjoin.

I'm not going to delve into my Ash Wednesday story, it's rather dull and not pertinent to the point I'm trying to make. The fact that I even have a story to tell is evidence enough of the intractable presence of religious "otherness." None of us will ever be able to remove ourselves from the isolation tract so long as religious anxiety remain unabated.

Paranoid and intolerant? Maybe. And the deeper one's faith the harder it is to sensitize  one's self to the pains that divide us. When such seemingly innocuous things like ashes on Ash Wednesday inspire trepidation—no matter how much respect coincides—than things have turned sour on the corner of faith and know-how.

Clearly there is so much more to being a Jew or a Catholic or Muslim or an atheist than the beliefs that divide. No one needs me to tell them that. But don't underestimate the positivity inherent in those very differences that can teach us so much about the world.

The man with the gray satchel is never on time. Often he runs late and we can see him jogging frantically down the road, bag jerking violently off his back. He may be early from time to time as well, but those days are undoubtedly rare. He appears every day though, heavy clad in a ski jacket carpenters jeans. Sometimes he wears a stocking cap but today he didn’t.

His name is David and he hawks the Chicago Sun-Times for ten hours a day on the corner of Pulaski and Peterson. Thin and graying with a perfect goatee, he looks a little like Henry Louis Gates Junior sans the thousand-dollar suite. I told him that once he looked at me like I’d just told him he resembled like Henry Louis Gates Junior.

“Is he good-looking,” he asked?

“I guess,” I replied. “But they don’t usually print his hedcut in the Wall Street Journal.”

“Well that’s not Sun-Times. Buy the Sun-Times, man. Only fifty-cents”

I don’t often buy from David because, well, since columnist Deborah Pickett got married, there’s been very little need to continue picking it up. If there’s no chance I can use her column to score points via e-mail, then there’s just no reason to waste half a buck on such a second-rate newspaper. I stopped watching Rachel Ray for the very same reason.

Still, I’m one for consistency, for guarantees no matter how untenable, so when David told me that today might be his last day, I was crushed. He’d found a better job, one that did not require him to spend hours enduring the cold Midwestern winter, and for that I was pleased. Conditions have taken a toll on him and he looks well older than his forty-two years. Still, a leak had sprung from the vessel of my life leaving me spinning just slightly off target.

I shook his hand. “Good luck to you, sir. I really will miss you.”

He thanked me, nodded and grabbed his satchel. It was only 4 p.m. and his shift was far from over.

Sally keeps a picture of a skinny Yorkshire terrier in a frame beside her computer. Most of the time it loafs in a niche in the corner by her mouse pad but sometimes, and these moments are rare, it'll stand regally atop her monitor surveying its fiefdom.  Rarer still are the days when photo is removed from its frame and tucked between the 8 and F6 keys. From a distance it looks like skinny finger waving "hello," although once I thought it was a bug.

Once Sally hid the picture. Or maybe she didn't hide it per se, but I certainly didn't see it when I came to cubicle for a meeting. The only other picture she keeps on her desk is of her niece Audrey, a girl I've never met but whom I was assured many years ago would be an "awful match" for me.

The picture was only absent for one day but its lacuna it left in its wake yawned from end of the office to another and people, even those who didn't work with Sally, maintained a position of repressed anxiety. People moved forward, going through the normal Thursday afternoon motions, but everyone was just slightly less fluid. Custodians, receptionists and executives moved in tense, exaggerated motions—some of them knocking over things, some ripping off too much paper at the printer, other tripping and falling over awkward, inappropriate phrases they'd never say otherwise. A window-cleaning crew moved in, poking through buckets of cleanser spilled by gawky accountants several times throughout the day.  

In many ways I've come to consider the picture the glue that holds Sally together. There is a sadness to her that can overwhelm one at times and it's reassuring—in whatever way I should be reassured-- to know that an anchor exists for her somewhere. That she has no children should come as little surprise and the fact she's adopted every twenty-something in the department even less so. Sometimes she even calls me "sonny boy," before ordering a thorough re-reading of my daily revenue report.

She chides us for not wearing gloves, dispenses patient albeit less-than-sage advice regarding our love lives and sometimes cat-sits for people on vacation.

Don't get me wrong, not having kids was a conscious choice on her part. She simply didn't want any and there's nothing wrong with that. But lately it appears that we, the adopted family of the accounts receivable department just aren't enough. At the age of forty-eight she's well aware that her chances for motherhood are slim at best. 

Sally is sad. Not pathetic, mind you. Pathetic is an upper-middle class teenage junkie. But the aura of sadness is real and it surrounds her always. Earlier this afternoon she told me about the frozen pipes at her house. It was like Debussey sonata.

We sat in the third floor lunchroom, talking and sipping weak coffee. We do this often, sit, talk, cvech. She does most of the talking and for the most part I'm more than content to listen. Today, however, I was in something of a mood (laundry issues, you don't want to know) and motioned to leave a few minutes before our break was over. In all honesty, I was a bit rude, it was obvious tell that I hadn't been paying much attention.

"Hey wait a sec, okay?" Her voice was cool, like a politician reading a statement.

The only other person in the lunchroom was someone from one of the collections departments and she was chatting breezily on a cell phone. A heavy feeling gathered over me and I found myself desperately wishing for someone else to enter. Facing sadness alone is one of the cruelest twists of the human experience. Like all of us, Sally faces pain alone every day. Today I faced it too. She offered me the picture.

She held firm between her thumb and forefinger, waving it as she spoke. She didn't explain why she wanted me to have it. She spoke of the dog in the present tense, and even mentioned an upcoming vet appointment. But she would answer no questions. She would only say that she didn't want the picture anymore. She stared at me very hard, there was something unmovable about her then, it made me want to start talking and never stop. I wanted to keep the stream of words flowing, to keep the upside facing up and downside facing way, way, down. But I didn't. I couldn't. And neither could she.

I told her to keep the picture then rushed out.

Later I reconsidered and she gave me picture. I taped it to my CPU but it didn't stay there long. Before the day wads over she asked for it back. She put in a drawer.

When I left, the picture still hadn't been returned to its original position. She'll bring it out when she's ready. When the ache subsides.

Ok seriously, Anderson Cooper and that Overstock.com model that reports the evening headlines need to just screw already. I'm getting a little tired of enduring night after night of their sophomoric non-sequiturs. How many times must we roll our eyes while "Scoop" Cooper and whatever her name is make cutesy little comments and blow verbal kisses at each other? Ugh.  Ok guys; time to stop. I mean it. It's annoying. Hell, even my grandmother is starting to gag and she owns the Jeanette McDonald movie library.

They need to have sex so that their banter can finally go from treacly and banal to bitter and desultory—which is really why we're all watching anyway. Why do you think Fox kept Bob Sirott and Marianne Marciano around for so long? If nothing else, CNN sexcapdes could finally get Cooper out of the country for a while, and how great would that be for ratings? Who wouldn't like to see ol' tinsel top throw a conniption fit during an anti-Danish riot in Damascus?

Sometimes I think that argyle is all that stands between us and the end of the world. It stands against the unyielding compromises and sartorial servitudes that undermine every tenet of resolve and self-respect. It's a thin barrier between delusion and absolute truth. And Even those who don't don the stripes and diamonds respect its certitude.

A middle age woman in jeans and a beige sweater sat on the washing the machine when I came down to dry my clothes. She was reading a magazine but tossed it quickly when she heard the door open. I think her name is Iris and as far as I know she isn't married. No kids either. Sometimes she asks me if I go to Mather, a high school on the city's north side. When I tell her I am twenty-six years old she feigns embarrassment and says how much I'll appreciate my "young looking face," in a few years.

I notice she wears little argyle. Lots of cable, though..

"I hope you don't mind," she tells me as I clomp down the metallic scales that stretch from the roof to the laundry room, "I put your clothes on the chair. I needed to dry. It'll just be a minute."

I told her that I did not mind that I'd just return later to stick my stuff in the dryer. I suppose I could have stuck around and make chit-chat, but I just wasn't up for it. And besides, "24" was going to start in a mere umm….two hours.

On my way back up, she called after me. "You have some kind of argyle fetish don't you?"

"I just like the pattern," I said from slightly beyond the laundry room door.

Then she asked me how many argyle sweaters I own. Seven, I almost called back. But then I thought. Is it eight? Nine? Ten? Fifteen? How many sweaters with wavy patterns could I own and what exactly did that say about me? Is there something wrong with purchasing one argyle sweater after another? Is it indicate of a fear of trying new things or losing myself to the capricious demands of secular society?

Or is it my way of staving off the beast? Asserting my creativity by eschewing the abstract?  The problem with patterns that they never end. Colors, sizes and shapes keep them moving, but resiliency keeps it all the same. The same but different: our weapon against Donna Karan.  

I told the woman I had ten argyle sweaters. When I came down a half an hour later she was still there, folding sheets and whistling quietly. Quickly, I tossed my stuff into the dryer. On my way out, however, I turned around and called down to her,

"You know, Iris, I think I actually have sixteen of them."

She didn't reply.  

Rain in Chicago. Sometimes it looks as if it’s falling up, marching skyward and vanishing into the heavens. It fuses with cabbage colored tides of the Great Lakes, a venal cocktail of Heaven and earth. Falling up, falling down, it tells no secrets but those we allow.

I didn’t bring an umbrella to the conference today so I stood beneath the glass canopy overlooking the foyer and waited for the rain to stop. I waited as throngs of my Jewish compatriots strolled, umbrellas raised, through the streets towards whatever awaited them on the other side of the night. I breathed the scent of G-d against the masses; it smelled like sweat. It’s a tough business this feeling good all over, a red herring, a key to the Necropolis, but we can’t endure without it. The rain took me home this afternoon, wherever that may be.

It's not often, but sometimes when at a party or at a club or something, I'll look around, take deep breath and say, "I'll bet I'm the only one in the room who voted for Bush."

Most of the time my companion, whoever it might be, will agree, call me a right-wing fascist whack-job and then mug me, but every now again I'll be shocked by an admission that in fact they too voted for the president. Well, perhaps "admit" isn't the right word because that implies some kind of ethical malfeasance and no Republican I know regrets voting for the man who heads the party. Although more than a few of us lament at the obscene amount of pork-barrel spending and I know I rolled my eyes over the whole Teri Schiavo thing, but for the most part we Republicans are proud of the choices the President has made. So when I said "admit" perhaps I should have said "reveal." Because even in a town as Democratic as Chicago, no one really knows who anyone votes for. Presumably.

Nevertheless, of America's five largest cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia) Chicago voted most overwhelmingly for Kerry in the last election. And with many of those voters still fuming over Florida or Ohio or Lewis Libby or whatever, the odds don't bode well for Republicans seeking to make friends at off Loop wine and cheese parties. Such was the case last Sunday when I joined a friend of mine at a little get together at her boss's condo on west Randolph St.  A Republican knows he's in trouble when there are no less than three ATM machines inside any building's lobby. The two Ira Glass wannabes congregating in the elevator didn't bode well either. I think one of them may have been drinking a latte.  

The condo was as expected. Bloated, Lichtenstein knock-offs, black and pistachio colored walls painted just sloppily enough to look ambivalently mod. Hard wood floors covered with plaid carpeting, exposed ductwork and two laptop computers completed the gentrification chic look they were no doubt going for. Okay, maybe that's a bit judgmental and harsh but whatever. I might care if it looked as if these so-called "progressives" (to take from Byron York) actually respected independence of thought and political recalcitrance. They don't though, and they quickly let me know it.

Things devolved in the usual way: a comment here, a rebuttal there a slightly raised voice somewhere in the middle. Actually, I'd like it known that I was very good for the bulk of the conversation and tried desperately to steer things towards things we can all agree to hate, like "Daisy Does America."

You're all going to have to forgive me on this one, because you see, I had very little choice in the matter. Something kind of snaps in my brain when I hear people exploiting tragedy for political gain—it seems so positively inimical to everything intellectual discourse is supposed to represent.  How anyone can feel justified blaming the recent mine tragedies on the President or the Republican parties is certainly beyond my grasp. I'm not going to go into what was said, I'm sure most of you can take a pretty educated guess.  The conversation ended abruptly when the host's wife, a skinny girl from Portland, threw down her fork and declared that all Republicans "are monsters," and that should all just move to Mississippi and secede. Oh, and I think she also said something about "misogynist, war-mongers," but that may have just been the brie talking.

After about half an hour of awkward chewing and few feeble attempts at interpretive dance (the kind of which Rufus Wainright so aptly lends), we eventually started talking about more import things like finding out how much everybody makes and then feeling the appropriate level of superiority/inferiority.  (Kidding! If anyone of them read that they'd start waxing dyspeptic about capitalism or globalization or something like that. All while wearing Abercrombie & Fitch's newest, I might add.) I think we all realized how cartoony we'd become and how easily we fell into the Bill Maher/Rush Limbaugh claptraps that keep the blogosphere in business. Although there were no "hey, I like John McCain too," moments, it's a pretty safe bet that most of us understood the faux pas we made; in tact, if nothing else.  

As I've mentioned on this site before, I'm moderate, even left-leaning on most social issues and I know that most people at that party wouldn't want to live in some Scandinavian-esque welfare state. One of them even gripped about her property taxes.

I know it's a cliché by now, but seriously, don't talk politics at social functions. Nothing good will ever come of it. Except in this case when the host's wife gave me a bottle of Shiraz as a token of good will. I'm saving it for Molly Ivins.

Some men are preceded by their reputations when they walk into a room, my dad is trailed by his. Not that this makes his command of a crowd any lesser a commodity but it does remove the luxury of time. Still, once the air of authority finally anchors, its spell is all but intractable.  That's how he kept thirty years of listless west-side teenagers engaged in high school biology and managed to promote and cultivate one of the most progressive IT departments the Chicago Public Schools has ever seen. My dad is a force of nature, a silent, powerful maelstrom against the peaks.

As is usually the case when I cross him unexpectedly, my dad was in the process of debating a band of strangers. Unknowns flock to him, slowly at first, doe-like, but eventually, after convincing themselves that he's safe they'll jaunt forward and engage him in whatever was on their minds. This evening it was the Super Bowl, a topic my dad knows precious little about. Nevertheless, when I foundearlier this evening he was leaning against an iron banister in one of the airport's less opulent vestibules. Waxing dyspeptic over the Bears loss to the Panthers last week, he looked like a softer Geraldo Rivera.

"The defense just wasn't its usual self," he said, repeating the refrain  every sports analyst north of St. Louis had been parroting ad neasueum.

But despite being out of his element he still looked comfortable. Reclining, he had unfastened the top button of his shirt and both his tie and long black overcoat stretched weakly towards the floor. The men around him couldn't have been much younger than he, yet they peered at him with a reverence usually withheld for tribal elders of some kind. Not this is not unusual, my dad has always had way of imposing veneration even when it was least warranted. Especially then. He bid his acolytes adieu as soon as he saw me coming.

I guess I should say here that my visit wasn't wholly unexpected; I was picking him up at the airport. Still, the plan was that I was to call once I'd arrived so that he could dart out and I wouldn't have to pay for parking. And I was going to do that but one of the policemen patrolling the ramps that truncate O'Hare's metallic façade  told me I could illegally park for a moment and the idea of surprising my dad was too tempting to ignore. My dad, in lockstep with most former high school teachers, deals with surprise the way most of us deal with a fly in our soup: clumsily. He's a constant planner but for some reason feels a strong rush of vindication when things don't go according to plan—another trait I believe unique unto high school biology teachers.

"What's wrong," he said after a quick handshake. "Is there a problem with the car?"

I hoisted his luggage over my shoulder and assured him there wasn't. He nodded sharply, saying nothing. Nodding is my dad's way of saying "I trust you," and I had brief impulse to follow suit. Nonverbal communication has always been the easiest mode of communication between men but it obfuscates as often as it clarifies and I wasn't willing to risk being misconstrued in a crowded airport terminal. Instead, I murmured a vague, "let's go," and trudged through the crowds like sap through bark.

Still, the declaration, wobbly as it was, helped ease us into a state of connectivity rare amongst the normally taciturn. It was if I'd eked out secrets of a discreet communicatory code that instantly turned Mandarin letters into solid Roman numerals. We chatted casually from the moment we got in the car until the directly after the Nagel exit on the expressway.

The night had grown thick by then. Furry. It was well after nine and temperatures had dipped into the very low thirties. Driving slow enough to crack the window, my dad gazed fixedly though the wind stream. His tie hung lower against this chest and his rings were removed yet it made him look even more distinguished. At a red light, I studied myself in the rearview. One of the women at Supercuts asked me if I was still high school the other day. Maybe one day I'll take that as a compliment, but right now all it does it make me wonder if a reputation for authority will ever follow me. Skinny me. Squeaky voiced, baby-faced me. We drove for a while contemplating where our reputations have found us.

"They offered me a position in Philly," my dad said finally. He works as a consultant for the Philadelphia Public Schools. "But I'm not going to take it."

I could tell this was something he'd considered thoroughly because his voice was harsh and raspy with sharp, midwestern overtones drowning sounds in pools of serenity.  I knew he would never accept anything full time out there so his announcement was more a matter of fact than anything else.  I asked him why, though, out of courtesy. He rolled the window down further an explained the things I already knew. After that all was silent.

He rolled the window down further. Neither of us was cold. 

I congratulated him and he thanked me. Then we spoke of world events. Alito, the Canadian elections, Iran. Nothing earthshaking. Everything earthshaking. Talk fed the power rushing through us, propelling us forward like a comedian with brand new material. My dad even took out the Philadelphia Inquirer he purchased at the hotel. I wanted to compare it to our Chicago papers, so he brought it back on my account.

He outlined a few articles, and went on irrelevantly, "they pile these papers on the floor at the hotel. Makes the lobby look unseemly."

And that's when my dad's reputation emerged from somewhere in the back seat. Suddenly, he was an authority. I had to know what he had to say and I had to know then. A man in control. A man who understands. Rational. Reasonable. An independent voter. The specter of his reputation followed us home. It lingered long after we trudged through the heavy Chicago snowfall and placed his luggage on the floor beside his bed.

It lingered as I read the paper, heavy over coffee and toast at the Golden Nugget. It lingered at the bar where I met a friend for scotch and a few games of pool. It lingers still, a giant amongst the elves. Even as I type this I wonder when it will eventually press on. I glare at the empty page and ask for my reputation.

But the page can't give it, it doesn't have a clue. Tt might find out some day, though. And when it does it'll bring atoms from both perception and reality and allay them with the things about myself I know exist. It might be all wrong; a cheaters chance at consequence perhaps, but it would still mean something real against the crushing waves of anonymity. It probably will be all wrong but such is the price we pay for seeking ourselves. Because while the search may be unlimited, recognition is finite to the extreme. 

"Are you cold?" My dad asked after pulling away from one oppressively long red light.

"No, I'm fine," I said. Satisfied, he turned away.