NOW, MORE THAN EVER,
NOT THE NEW ANYONE

Sorry I haven’t written all week. I believe I’ve spent most of it stuck in traffic at this intersection. I don’t know why in the name of all that is Holy Holy Holy Motherfreaking Hotcakes Batman With Three Hail Marys And A Cherry On Top all the construction on Lincoln Avenue has to occur during the morning rush hour, but evidently it does. For twenty minutes, through five light changes, I sat in my car and watched the dumptruck dump and the steamroller roll and the lady with the flag flag and the man with the rake rake and the steamroller roll roll roll backwards and roll roll roll forwards and that’s all fine and good except THIS IS NOT A RICHARD SCARRY BOOK. This is my commute. For Christ’s sake.

thanks to very helpful reader responses:

* They are not just in Chicago. HQMs thrive in New York City (but only midtown Manhattan and not Brooklyn) and living specimens have also been discovered in Washington D.C., Boulder, Colorado, and as far west as Malibu, California. Many have also been found in Toronto, so when it comes to customs regulations I guess they’re not inspected as thoroughly as produce or domestic animals.

* According to the anecdotal evidence so far, the salon services include brow waxing, “paraffin hand dipping,” occasional use of illegal Russian hair dye, and really crappy haircuts.

* There are also Hair Question Women. However, there is little to indicate that Hair Questioners reproduce sexually. My theory is they release airborne spores called “product.”

* Also: Nail Question Men. Possibly a mutation of the species. And I don’t know about you but “Can I ask you a question about your nails?” sounds like it would be even creepier coming from a complete stranger.

For you ladies who live and/or work in Chicago: have you ever been approached by an unsettlingly bright-eyed young man who wanted to ask you a question about your hair? I mean that he seriously came up to you all friendly-like and said, “Excuse me, can I ask you a question about your hair?” If this has happened to you, you know what comes next if you say, um, yeah, sure: a demented and elaborate sales pitch about salon coupons. When I worked in the Loop I had my Hair Question Man Encounter, as did every woman my age in my office. Mimi Smartypants has written about this phenomenon, too.

I don’t work downtown anymore but for some odd reason I remembered these guys the other day. It seems I have lingering questions about the Hair Question Men. Are they still around? Does anyone know one? Who do they work for? Do they exist in other parts of the country? What IS their question about hair and why do they never ask it once they’ve gotten your attention? I must know. If you have had a HQM Encounter or if you have any special knowledge about the HQMs themselves, let me know.

From: “Armando Francis”
Subject: .:P”R-0:V’E-N” *T.0 `ENHAN_C_E^ P_EN*l.S”‘*

My God, it’s so enhanced that Armando can now type with it.

That’s really all the proof you need.

A whole bunch of you have written in to ask about trixies. Read more about them here or here. Really, they’re harmless. If one approaches, just spray water on it. Her. Whatever.

After much gym deliberation I’ve decided to rejoin Women’s Workout World. Last week I stopped in to take a look around. It looks even worse from the outside now. Any drinking establishment with a sign as crappy and beat-up as the sign on the roof of Women’s Workout World would likely be the kind of place where you could rest your head on the bar and find a good toothless man to hassle you, and really, that’s all I’ve ever expected from my gym. And if the ghetto sign keeps the trixies away that’s fine with me.

But things have gotten a little better inside. The whole place is still decorated in the vernacular of Late Century Aerobic Empire, with purple and teal and neon tubing, but I think I can stand that, especially now that they’ve gotten more equipment. Thighmaster Mary is still there, her quads as mighty as ever. I’ll tell you how it goes.

You should know that when the leaves change color and the weather gets cooler I become a total gaylord. I buy the little pumpkins and line them up on my windowsill; I hang up the precious indian corn; I set out, and I’m not kidding here, a Bowl o’ Gourds on my coffee room table. Decorative gourds for purposes of thoughtful Autumn Contemplation should my guests feel the need. Do not tell me that they look “all freaky and shit;” do not call them Nature’s Ass Toys. That’s nasty and I don’t want to hear about it. I take my Fall Fun very seriously.

Moreover, you need to appreciate the scented candle that I got. It comes in a mason jar and lighting it is like setting off a fucking Pumpkin Spice Bomb in my living room. It’s great. I am pretty sure I can burn this candle, a cigar, a pile of tires, and a big bowl of hair all at the same time and my place will still smell all spicy cozy like Cottages of Yore where families would spend evenings at the hearth lighting sticks of cinnamon and tossing pumpkins back and forth or some damn thing. I love it, I tell you. Fall. FALL!!!

I hope that by now you’ll have read about how Pinky was a winning contestant on Remote Control.

Now I need to tell you about how that show played an indirect but pivotal role in helping me discover something about myself. Something VERY STUPID.

In 1989 Remote Control went on a college tour and they came to my school and sent out a call for contestants. Okay–no, I didn’t apply to be on the show. I wasn’t on the show. They had the show in Hancher Auditorium and I went to see it with two dull girls from my dorm floor; some frat guy was the winner. But the next day I read in the paper about the contestant selection process and how you had only a few seconds to give the producers a funny and convincing reason to put you on the show. And how one girl made the cut because she said, “Well, I can put my entire fist in my mouth.”

I read that and thought for a second, and then I put my fist in my mouth. I’d never done that before but clearly it was not a big deal. But that week people I knew kept mentioning the story of The Girl Who Could Put Her Fist In Her Mouth. “Like this?” I’d said. “OH MY GOD,” everyone else said.

I never actually met The Girl Who Could Put Her Fist In Her Mouth but a year later, when America’s Funniest People put out a local casting call, I read about her again. I figured if she could get so much mileage out of this stunt then maybe I could, too.

And I’m sorry to say I did. I’m sorry so many of you had to see me do it. You want to see me do it now?

Bizarre Encounter #1: Saturday at Trader Joe’s. An employee was mopping the floor by the refrigerator cases and I had to stand still and wait until she was finished. I looked around. Another woman was getting something out of the case just a couple of feet away, and her little girl sat in the child seat of her shopping cart. The child was a toddler and she had a pacifier in her mouth and she had that dispassionate look about her that two-year-olds have sometimes, when it seems like their world is in a completely different pattern of orbit from ours. It didn’t seem like she’d ever be old enough to talk. I didn’t notice what she had in her hand. But about two seconds after I smiled at her she dropped it. Deliberately. It was a plastic case of blueberries and they scattered as smoothly as ball bearings.

Her mother turned back. “Oh,” she said, as if she’d just missed seeing a traffic light change back to Go. I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

I don’t care what other people say. I think it’s great that you have your own book club. This is just what we expect from the guy who got an entire generation of awkward girls to read William Blake. Sometimes it was hard to decide whether a fedora or a copy of Songs of Innocence and Experience was the coolest Duran Duran accessory. I suppose we could have waited until college for various creepy-but-compelling herbal-cigarette-smoking grad student guys to help us shape our passionate and misinformed opinions of Blake, but no–because of you, Simon, we all had our first Deep Blake Thoughts at the precocious age of 14. Never mind that sometimes we were also wondering about the fearful symmetry in your trousers, Simon. It was an important early literary experience.

But I have to tell you, Simon: after two years (from 1983 to 1985) of sustaining a complete faith in your genius in lyrics such as no steel reproaches on the table from before and on the razors edge you trail because there’s murder by the roadside in a sore afraid new world, don’t you even fucking make me try to read House of Leaves. No way, Mr. Union of the Snake, I have about had it with the stylish esoteric shit. No, no, no.

Still, your book reviews are really kind of charming, and they make me want to sit on your lap and teach you stuff about commas.

Love, Wendy