Diagnosis: Acute vampirosis with hunchbackism

EARLIER TONITE I was in the Underground Cafe at Columbia College, sewing popped-off buttons back onto my new jacket (looks nice, but the quality is crap) when who should show up in the place but S H A R K U L A -- in a black North Face coat and a cape under which was stowed a backpack, making him look like a hunchback. I asked him if this was early Halloween getup, or was it perhaps a promotion for the CD I'd heard he was releasing, The Diagnosis of Sharkula? He seemed to answer in the negative, but then I didn't quite fully understand his answer. Shark can be kinda hard to follow somtimes.


Me and this crazy cat go back a minute or two. We actually went to high school together (where we were more passing acquaintances than friends), and then went here to Columbia too. Not only that, I'm always running into him somewhere: on the Metra, on the El, on Milwaukee in Wicker Park, here at CCC. Not utterly surprising, since this guy gets around. At one time he was living on the streets. I didn't ask him if he'd found a more or less permanent place to alight.

Our convos always end the same way. I buy one of his latest rap CDs. (He has way too many -- he makes one about every week. They're largely off the top of his head, crazy, schizophrenic, and sometimes profane, but usually in a way that's so absurd it's funny rather than offensive.) I promise to keep in touch and that we'll collaborate on something soon. But I don't keep in touch. One reason is that he's generally only reachable by phone -- and not a cell phone, it's just a voice mailbox he checks -- while I'm more of an email guy; I don't have a real cell phone deal yet, though I'm shopping around, and I'm never at home to use the land line.

But I promised this dude I'd keep in touch and I will honor that. He invited me to come over to the Abbey Pub to see Del tha Funkee Homo Sapien. Now that sounded like it might be fun, though I was fretting a bit about cover. All my fun money for this paycheck is gone, thanks to my music-gear habit. Also, I'm just kind of worn out from staying up late and getting up early pretty much all week. I don't even think I'm gonna stop by Gallery Chicago tonight for veggie food and wine, as I often do on Friday nites with or without my interstellar elffriend Annabelle. I think I'll go home and work on some tunes, or maybe just read.