WHAT'S YOUR CRACK?


Sportmarty and I rode bikes to the Music Box Theatre last night to see Half Nelson, which is about a (chaste) relationship that develops between a 13-year-old girl and her crackhead teacher after she discovers him nearly ODing in the girl's locker room. The poor teacher is on the pipe, it seems, because his parents are ex-hippies who drink a lot and the world is a scary, unfair place. Nonetheless he is hot. Whatever. I like films about miserable single people who live alone, addiction or no.

They kept drinking red wine in the movie, and like a minkey I immediately wanted some, too.

We sat behind SM's ex wife. After the movie I learnt that she just got rid of a slow old Raleigh bike. Later, as we unlocked our rides, I found out that she is also a speed freak who favors a fast silver ten-speed. She says it doesn't hurt her back or neck because she sits up higher by gripping the top part of the drop-bars - where there aren't any brake levers. She says she has enough time to get to the brakes (on the lower part) if necessary. Hmmmm.

As SM and I walked down busy Southport Avenue, which is home to four blocks of fake pubs, mediocre restaurants, frivolous boutiques, empty ice cream shops and so much sidewalk seating that we could barely navigate between that and the drunken Cubs fans and other perfumed white people swarming the area, we talked about the movie and TV shows like Deadwood and Rescue Me. Apparently SM showed his foreign ladyfriend a couple of episodes of the latter, and she got hooked immediately -- and spent the next few days watching all the episodes back to back.

"That's her crack," I said.

Turns out she's into red wine, too.

Then I started to think about what my crack is.

In no particular order:

-Procrastination
-Yoga
-The Internet
-The Caffeine
-Corn Chips -- the saltier the better
-Reading everything from package labels to inane blogs
-Writing everything from a media column to an inane blog
-Deadwood
-Corn Chips
-Self-Sabotage
-Listening to the radio, from Wake up with Whoopie (rarely a good idea) to Opie and Anthony (one of them does a spot-on Howard Stern) to public radio's Living on Earth (a riveting show that the local station sandbags by airing it Saturdays at 6AM
-The Walgreen's discount aisle (reading glasses with case for $5! Lifelike singing bird for $1.49! Carabiner flashlight for 29 cents! 10 bags of herbal tea for 50 cents! A lighted fountain for $1.49!)
-Corn Chips (it's gotten so bad I'm using salted shelled edamame as methadone)
-Bicycles (I have six: my mother's 1940's Schwinn Cadillac -- the heaviest bicycle ever made -- 1970's his-and-her Schwinn five-speeds [a Suburban and a Collegiate]; a Monster Fat [Fat City Cycle] mountain bike with Biopace II chain from the 1980's; the slow, ugly-but-comfortable new Raleigh; and the beloved 1970's Cinelli racer, which is sadly out of commission at the moment)
-Ogling other bicycles, and comparing them to mine as well as all the other bikes in the vicinity. (I tend to salivate when I see Marins or classic bikes with fenders, bells and generator lights.....hmmm -- maybe this one is more porn-y than crack-y).
-Mysore

So much for those yogic ideals of sense-control and non-attachment.

Now, what's your crack?