Chicago Jon: A Day in the Life

By Chicago Jon Hoffman

"And then, depression set in...."
                                     -- John Winger (Bill Murray) in the movie STRIPES, reeling from the loss of his job, car, and girlfriend in one morning.

OK so it was HARDLY that bad, but for the expectations I had set forth for myself on the project I had been working on for several months, we'll just say I really wasn't in a dancing mood. 

You see, I'd come to meet this Funny Car driver (actually, through my works on this magazine) and we hit it off pretty well, and I'd made a tape for him, which I had hoped would springboard into other projects down the road. You could say I had all the dominoes lined up, ready to fall -- I must clarify, I mean the iconic wooden game-pieces, not the pizzas that used to deliver in 30 minutes, which, ironically, tasted as if they were made out of said iconic game pieces. When I mailed the tape off though, sensing that it was not my best work (it happens) I tossed in the caveat "if you don't like it, send it back,; no shot, no foul" which brings us back to me, standing at the mailbox staring at a rather familiar looking bubble-mailer...sigh. 

Vince Lombardi once said "the glory is not in the rising, it is rising after you've fallen", so with that and a buncha other motivational clap-trap in one hand and the mail in my other, I do what any hard-working American does at the end of a grand-master-stinko kinda day, I moved on to an establishment where "everybody knows my name."

Fortunately there's such an arrangement right next door to my studio.  Stroll over to the jukebox; what sounds good tonight?  Well, when the going gets tough, the tough play Deep Purple, and this night their legendary appearance at Ontario Motor Speedway, a part of California Jam, is just what the doctor ordered. (Any concert where the band is forced to flee an enraged Santa Anita Fire Marshal via helicopter is clearly my kind of show!) And so, with tonight’s forecast calling for "continued optimism with widely scattered malt-themed beverages, and a 25 to 50% chance of 'Jackyl-Juice'" the sounds of the enfante-terrible peeling through the opening riff of BURN filled the room, and I began opening the now notorious parcel.