I'm not gay, but my column is

Chicago Sun-Times ports columnist Rick Morrissey should just come clean and confront the issues he has with how he sees other males sometimes. In his column on Friday, Feb. 19, he once again wrote hundreds and hundreds of words which left left the reader wondering, "huh?" at its end. And, once again, he showed that he has some issues with what he sees as a lack of masculinity in male athletes sometimes.

The column this time around started off innocently enough, as he praised Chicago-area native Evan Lysacek for winning the gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics the night previous. But he couldn't simply congratulate Lysacek for his gold and get on with it. He had to attack the man's sport, as well as the effeminate nature of some who participate in it and watch it.

In discussing the matchup between Lysacek and the Russian who came in a very close second to him, Morrissey noted that, "Thursday wasn't an arms race. It was style vs. might." He added, "There's a raging battle in figure skating between the people who want athletic jumps to be rewarded more and those who think artistry should be recognized more. Some want higher and faster. Some want more chiffon."

"Chiffon." He was just getting started, though.

"I don't presume to speak for all men, but I will say that many of us would enjoy the sport more if one's vertical leap were valued over the spangled piping on one's pants."

A little uncomfortable watching the figure skating, are we?

But wait, there's more.

"Here's an added bonus, football fans. Lysacek managed to look halfway OK in his outfit."

"Football fans"? Why should anyway give a rat's ass what "football fans" think of figure skaters? Do people who like, say, hockey, worry about what those who like tennis think of their sport, for instance? That's almost like saying, "Here's an added bonus, steak eaters. The salad is halfway OK." It makes no sense at all and there is no reason to draw such an analogy.

Are you steamed, yet, readers? No? Well, what about this, then?

"This is sport as envisioned by college theater majors."

Attention theater majors, theater professionals, and theater schools: The offices of the Sun-Times are at 350 N. Orleans St., if you need to find it for your protests. It's in a building called the Apparel Center, which is next to the Merchandise Mart -- you know the place, where dozens, if not hundreds, of interior designers, kitchen and bath places, tile, rug, antique and decorative glass wholesalers work out of. It is also the home of an art and design school, as well as a couple high falutin tea and coffee shoppes. It's a really gay place -- wonder how comfortable Rick feels working there.

He then wrote, about the outfits, "I also know that there was a skater wearing a tuxedo with spangles (he fell) and another dressed like a swashbuckler (down went Errol Flynn!).

The Czech Republic's Tomas Verner, in a rhinestone-studded vest, skated to the music from ''The Godfather,'' bringing to mind what Luca Brasi said to Don Corleone: ''And may their first child be a masculine child.''

I know! He cannot help but write about the figure skaters' costumes, but he qualifies his comments by saying, more or less, that these skaters are soooo gay.

There's more: "Jeremy Abbott of the United States smacked the ice hard while attempting a quadruple toe loop, but at least he tried. However, points should be taken off for the blue satin shirt buttoned to the top.

Why doesn't somebody break out and wear something different? Jeans and a T-shirt. Muscle shirts. Anything."

So, let me get this straight (ahem) here -- Rick Morrissey seems to be saying, in this pointless column, in effect, that "figure skating is so gay. It kind of makes me feel a little gay, which I don't like. Maybe if I just could root for figure skaters to fall down and snickered about their outfits and wished they wore more masculine clothes, I wouldn't feel so uncomfortably gay."

Mind you, this is the same guy who addressed the "scandal" that was a few of the Chicago Blackhawks players being photographed shirtless in a limo in Vancouver earlier this season by saying the thing he had the problem with wasn't that they were caught with their shirts off, literally, but that they looked like they belonged in a boyband, and not a hockey team. Morrissey wrote that he wants his hockey players to be hairy and have chipped and missing teeth and look like smelly mouth-breathing types, and not like young, smooth, wrinkle-less, doe-eyed boys that he ... well, I don't want to go all the way there, but why would he criticize hockey players for looking good with their shirts off if it didn't make him uncomfortable with the way in which he saw these men?

And, let it be noted that when he was with the Chicago Tribune, he spent a column-worth of prime newspaper space commenting on how he did not care for Chicago Bull Kirk Hinrich's very plain haircut.

Morrissey ended Friday's column by writing, about men's figure skating, "after (flamboyant figure skater Johnny) Weir, (Lysacek) looked like a wing-tipped businessman in a sleek, dark outfit. Maybe there's hope yet for this sport."

There may be hope yet for this sport, but not for Rick Morrissey.

"There's an all-night party..."

Sometimes -- OK, oftentimes -- I feel in a rut professionally. My efforts to be something bigger and better than what and where I am now meet small degrees of success, but these successes seem fleeting, and it feels like every time I get a rung up on the ladder, that rung breaks and I'm back to where I was. Every time it seems that I'm about to replace some nationally-known but not very interesting columnist at the Sun-Times, I quickly find myself back to the reality of calling far away suburban police and fire departments in the middle of a weekend night to get details on an accident or shooting, only to be told to call back on Monday.

But enough pity for today, because I need to remember that there was a time seven or eight years ago when I truly, truly hated my work circumstances, when there were times I'd be ill at the thought of going to work at a soul-sapping place, and the one place where I felt free and happy and still full of some sort of potential was at neo, on the new wave "Planet Earth" Thursday nights, with Dave Roberts spinning the discs and a bunch of wonderful, welcoming people working the bar and door and filling the dancefloor. And I need to remember, also, that I would not have believed anyone had they told me then that one day, only a handful of years from that time, that Dave and his other half, Kristine, would have their own bar, and that I would write about it for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Well, Part I of that dream happened just a couple months ago, when Dave and Kristine opened Late Bar, in Chicago's Avondale neighborhood. Part II comes true Friday, Feb. 12, when my story about the place is scheduled to be printed in the paper. The piece is small, only a few hundred words, and there is no accompanying art, but I feel as though I've actually achieved something here. My particular work situation often sucks, but the consolation is that old refrain about having your foot in the door...well, I guess that's true in a way. Now I just need to get the rest of my ample self through that damned door!

Excuse me for a couple days here while I pat myself on the back. In some ways this is a minor accomplishment, but in other ways it signals how far I've come, though there is still a ways to go.

My Other Blog

So, as if I don't have enough on my plate already, (pun half-intended), I now blog for the Chicago Sun-Times' food section/Web site/food site on the Web.

The blog, "Digging In," (you like it? I came up with that), is filled with food features, food and restaurant news, observations on food (that's by me - I wonder about things a lot) and occasional restaurant reviews. I know, I know, as if there aren't enough people writing about food and newspapers and magazines and Web sites blogging about food. But we hope this is a little different, because it is, for the main part, written by people whose background is in news reporting. Two of the people, Janet and Lisa, actually know and write about food often -- Janet is the paper's food editor, Lisa does the 'food detective' column. So, we'll have stuff on what chef is in the running for what food award, but we will also report on restaurants that are closed by the city because of health code violations and mouse droppings in the food prep areas. We'll also cover some things that the serious "foodies" wouldn't stoop so low as to write about -- that's where I come in. I am the guy who asks the stupid questions, but who hopefully finds some interesting food news and bits and bites (another intended pun) sometimes.

I am not what you would call a "foodie." I live right around the corner from one of the most renown "foodie" haunts in Chicago, a Japanese restaurant that is open like three hours a week and supposedly is one of the few "authentic" Japanese restaurants in the metropolitan area, and I've never been there. I also live a few blocks away from one of the hottest pizza places in the city, but I have never been there and do not intend to go there, because the place is so cool, so hip, that they cannot even bring themselves to say, in the window, that they are a pizza place/bakery. Seriously. My other half and I have walked past many a time and have wondered if the joint is a neo-retro hardware/furniture store, an organic bakery or rustic art gallery. No menu in the window, no hours posted, and they've got some ambiguous 'what could it be?' name, as well. I don't get it.

But I do like food. I like eatin' it, like cooking (sometimes) like watching other people cook, like trying to figure out what's in certain dishes. I like reading magazines about food and I get all breathless when I walk by the kitchen showrooms in the Merchandise Mart.

So we'll see how this goes. Every New Year's I resolve to be published in one place I haven't been before, and I guess this kind of sort of fulfills that resolution for this year. Who knows, maybe Lisa, janet and I will become sort of a Siskel, Ebert and friend of food writers. And soon, radio and TV shows will be clamoring for our witty and wicked insights. I can dream, can't I?