Chicago – Dinner with Chad Meyers

restaurant: G’s Dawg n’ Burger; Celtic Crossing; The Drake Hotel’s Coq d’Or; Delilah’s; Los 3 Panchos
occupation: Surgeon
birthdate: 10/14/76
connection: went to high school together in Evansville, IN -> E-mail forwarded to him (haven’t seen or heard from him in five years)
ordered: hamburgers and fries; beer; coffee; beer; tacos

We started of from my hotel and walked down to G’s Dawg n’ Burger, ordered some burgers and fries. We decided to walk next door to the Celtic Crossing to have some beers with our meal. There we met John, the owner, and a recovering alcholic who wanted lots of information from Chad because of his background in medicine. We were harrassed by this guy for the duration of our meal. He showed us some of his paintings that were hung in the bar. We had a light conversation about Cooke Hospital, where Chad was doing his reidency. He suggested I see the movie Buckaroo Banzai and to check out the artists Paul Pfeiffer and Gabriel Kuri.

We than got into a conversaion about this weird wristwatch deice that he had to wear that tracked all of his vital statistics. It was issued to him by a group of scientists at Harvard who wanted to study the behavior and health of medical students going through their residency. He had to write down his sleep paterns and eating habits among other things for some period of time.
Somehow this led into conversation of Chad’s Guatamalan trip he took recently. He told a story about a bus trip he took there and missed his stop because he had taken some valium to comfort himself through the ride. He was kind of stuck at the end of the road.

Chad was always into Grafitti so we talked about the SF writer Dose Green for a while. Chad metioned that I should check out Dose 1, clouddead, themselves, and anticon.com. I tried writing, but I sucked badly and gave away my markers and paint. Chad on the other hand was pretty damn good, and we reminised about this old McDonald’s tray that he tagged up once.
I mentioned my interest in someday having my own TV show and Chad immediately said I should watch “Fishing with John Lurie” – where this fella who knows nothing of fishing takes personalities on a fishing trip and documents his experiences on the boat. He apparently has had Dennis Hopper and Jim Jarmusch among many. We then talked about the brilliance of Jackass, and how it has forever changed the practical joke, skate & snowboard videos, performance art, and the boundries of television programming.
We picked up, left the Celtic Crossing and headed to the Drake Hotel for a look and a bottemless cup of hot coffee in a swanky dimly lit joint – Coq d’Or. It was raining pretty good, so when we got there, it was very rewarding to find out there was a free buffet! We were too stuffed with the burger and fries, but it was just the fact that there was a free buffet that was comforting.
We caught up a great deal about relationships, old friends, and life’s changes. Chad made a call to an old friend Rob and we made plans to meet up with him after we checked out the Lee Bonteacu exhibit at the contemporary.

About 7:00 we ended up at this place called Delilah’s in a hip area of Chicago. Chad got lured in to ordered a cider and I had a Delerium Tremors. Rob showed up shortly thereafter. We all discussed Chad’s nickname “Sticky.” There were, we swear, months that went by for him without a shower.

I told them I wanted to take a cab accross the country and talked ab it about my other work, and Chad cited the Situationists. He said their theories were rooted in Marxist theory. Mobilizing the working class. He said that the working class that produces a Refrigerator, for example, are removed from both the people who will buy this product and from their task in making the product. The working class forming a large part of our consumerist society perpetuates the cycle of mass consumption and production. Chad continued by saying that as a solution, through “the Society of the Spectacle” Guy Debord, the self-proclaimed leader of the Situationists, outlines that workers should buy nothing, work for nothing, but quit your job and make works of art.

Chad suggested that I read “Crime think for Begginers,” a book on social anarchy. Do what you want to do now and things will happen – don’t prepare for the future. I drew the paralell of the anarchist concept of direct action. We got back to Guy Debord for a moment with his Alison in Wonderland dubovers, and then departed in the direction of magazines. Lumpn, Select Magazine, Cometbus by Aaron Cometbus, a berkeley punk rocker who wrote a book called “double duce.”

Rob, all riled up, said that there must be a way to bring down ticketmaster. He then briefly talked about his experiences working at Enterprise Rent-a-Car. He heard a good deal of contempt for the work, but said that the money was good and it was a job for now. Rob has always been such an optimist. Last time we hung out, we were trimming huge marijuana plants down and breaking them up into eigths. Torch Welding was briefly discussed, don’t remember exactly in what context.

Due to Chad’s extensive knowledge and love for music, the evening ended with a long discussion of Chad’s picks. Oddly though, we got involved in a short conversation about my motives to start the student ethics committee while at the Kelley School of Business. I was saved when Chad’s girlfriend Racheal showed up, and I quickly suggested we try some of Chicago’s finest tacos.