In stuff I never saw coming, in August, I’ll be speaking at the @korruptedcomedy writer’s workshop the day before my 45th birthday. At @fanexpochicago - Life is weird. One day, you’re stealing ramen from Walmart and the next, you’re on a gig at the same convention with Mel “I hate everyone” Gibson and The Hobbits. I have no idea what to tell people about weaving jokes about dog balls into a tirade against capitalism, but boy am I gonna try.
I could be the next best nonfiction writer in Austin. Or at least in the popular vote, whatever. Link is in bio. Do a homie a solid so I can give it to my mom.
I needed new writer photos. I turned to @roi33 and @j_clarkphotos and they made me look like a beautiful pink princess. You should hire them to make you look awesome, too. I felt weird not all in black. And it was hard to not make metal face.
Red Eye by Robert Dean
Robert Dean’s Red Eye delivers essays full of life, attitude, and the uncensored honesty of a South Side perspective. I read it Tuesday night in one sitting, hooked—it had been a long time since I read a book so refreshingly blunt and familiar. Reading it was like sitting in Vito & Nick’s on a weekday night, scoffing at North Side pizza joints with their cloth napkins, until the large Irish guy at the bar finally says, “…because, let me tell you, kid…”—and you shut up and listen. That’s exactly what I did until I closed the back cover.
The book emanates Chicago: dibs, tavern-style pizza, hot dogs “dragged through the garden,” scrapping as a way of life. We aren’t sophisticated New York; we aren’t dreamy Los Angeles. We are a third-place city—a title not worth defending, free to be raw, crude, real—and that is exactly how Dean writes. He explores the myth of the artist who lives at full throttle, creating from the destruction left in their wake. One of my favorite lines comes early, when Dean describes the belief that artists must live at extremes to produce genius—but what we don’t see are the “unwritten novels, the mornings lost to shaking hands.” Dean knows because he has lived it.
Make no mistake: this book isn’t about Chicago or the “rock and roll” lifestyle. It’s about life, perspective, and reflection. Dean’s essays reveal moments from his life and the deeper truths he’s uncovered simply by living. For me, it enriched my perspective and reminded me how much insight comes from being present and paying attention.
Seriously, the book costs $5. Buy it.
(MY SINCERE APOLOGIES FOR INADVERTENTLY ASSOCIATING THIS BOOK WITH MALORT!! Trust me, the book is better 😄)
#reels #bookstagram #robertdean #redeye #essays
