TODAY'S LESSON (LISTEN UP, KIDS)....
....is that you cannot assume a cotton yoga mat is some kind of futon, set it up in the living room and sleep on same. Even if you place it on top of a Purple Travel Mat, sleep with just a sheet and use an extra fan to aim the conditioned air to your side of the apartment. No no no no no. The only thing that will help you sleep is watching The English Patient (is anyone else freaked out that Ralph Fiennes is only 43? He's either lying or spending a lot of time doing the opposite of yoga) while reading that Tuesdays with Morrie -- which instead of instilling an appreciation for all things mundane and beautiful and living in the moment and loving your fellow human makes you resent the manipulations of the Detroit-based sportswriter who wrote the thing. In any case *that* little cocktail is what finally put me down. At that point I knew that I wasn't going to be missing out on anything if I lost consciousness. Which reminds me; Is gouty Al Franken the new mascot of the Sundance Channel? Ewe. So of course I slept late and skipped yoga (will go tomorrow, which is usually the day off) and got to work on the book....


THREE THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW CAME FROM CHICAGO:

16-INCH SOFTBALL
(invented in 1887 at Chicago’s Farragut Boat Club "when a Yale man tossed a bound-up boxing glove at a Harvard man and the Harvard man whacked it with a broomstick," from the Metro Chicago Almanac).

THE HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS
(originally called The Savory Big 5 -- now there, kids, is a band name -- they were founded in 1927 by one Al Saperstein; the original quintet came from Phillips High School and went on to beat the 1936 Olympic team, which at the time was whites-only).

AMERICAN YOGA
(Swami Vivekananda introduced yoga to America when he crashed the 1893 World Parliament of Relgions on 9/11 and stole the show with a rousing speech at the Memorial Art Palace (now known as the Art Institute). He claimed the Windy City as his second home, and went on to tour the US (as did Anagarika Dharmapala of the Buddhist tradition); the outcome was the creation of an American Vedanta Society and a Buddhist society).