Wendy McClure

Author and Professional Obsessive.

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A time to plan. A time to reap. A time to rinse really thoroughly.

October 25, 2007 by Wendy

Yesterday was our last organic produce box delivery, which was good because we were getting a little tired of the weekly bounty, which lately had consisted of Rooty Things (beets and radishes and a kohlrabi, always a lone kohlrabi in the box), Squashy Things (and here I mean actual winter squash, although a lot of it has gone squishy a lot sooner than expected) and Dirty Greeny Leafy Things in Wet Bags. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve been able to wash and cook and make some really good meals from a lot of this stuff (except the kohlrabi, which started showing up in the box one-measly-kohlrab-at-a-time shortly after I’d blown all sense of culinary adventure on the fucking radicchio), but now we’re ready to get back to pretending that stuff doesn’t come out of the ground. I want my spinach harvested by unicorns, please!

We’re not sure if we’re going to do it again next year. Chris was saying the other night that that while it definitely wasn’t bad to get all this different stuff every week, it was sort of like when a relative or someone comes to town on really short notice and you have to take him out to Navy Pier or something, and even though you wind up having a pretty good time with Uncle Whatshisface, you still wish you could do the thing you were going to do in the first place. And then furthermore imagine that Uncle Whatshisface shows up covered with mud and sometimes gets moldy, or goes a little demented, or even just withers up and dies without warning, and, well, that’s kind of how it is about the produce box.

Filed Under: personal, this thing I'm doing

Slowly ascending

October 16, 2007 by Wendy

Early colors

If you’ve been looking on my Flickr account you’ve noticed I’ve been off frolicking among big jolly hot-air balloons somewhere. Last week I was visting my dad in Albuquerque, and one morning we attended the Balloon Fiesta, which I believe is Spanish for “Party of the Swellings.” And swell it was! We got up at dawn during the first Sunday of the festival to watch the mass ascension. Apparently you can go right up to the balloons as they’re inflating, and touch them, and pull on their ropes and stuff, and they will not collapse into Hindenburgish balls of flame. Who knew? (Oh, everyone there except me.) It was one of the most awesome things I have ever seen, and I don’t mean awesome the way I usually mean “awesome.” I mean I watched those things and my mind emptied out, and propane torches roared in the void, and whoa. For about two hours of whoa. There were also plenty of specially-shaped novelty balloons (bees, an elephant, a Darth Vader head, etc.) and I tried to think up freaky new novelty balloon shapes of my own (anvil, giant Vicodin tablet, Black Power fist, etc.), but I never got tired of seeing the regular old balloony balloons take off. It was just what I needed after the past couple of weeks at work, which were, hard, like weird back -of-the-eyes-headache hard. I’m cutting back on my hours in a couple weeks, but there are many things to finish first.

So I’m back, and I’m still trying to catch up on job and life and all this new stuff going on. Chris got a new job and it’s close enough to my workplace that we drive in together. I’m trying to work on all these new writing projects. The days have changed their shape and feel and color. I’m slowly getting hooked on Diet Coke again. I’m hanging in there, baby, like that damn cat in the 70s poster.

Oh, and speaking of Friday (which is really what we’re all hanging-in-there-baby for, isn’t it?), I’ll be reading at the Book Cellar with Stacey Ballis, Elizabeth Crane, Jen Lancaster, and Claire Zulkey. Come see us! You can get wine! Maybe we’ll even braid each other’s hair and prank call Witty Male Writers at their readings.  BE THERE.

Filed Under: bookstuff, misc, personal

All that sweet green icing flowing down*

September 30, 2007 by Wendy

Early colors

I’m in the beginning stages of a couple of writing projects, and in the middle of production at work, and at the end of a month full of out-of-town visitors and weekend trips, and somewhere in between all that I had a shitload of laundry which I’ve just now done. How are you? Don’t mind me; I’m trying to catch the hell up.

Really, I sort of feel like I left my life out in the rain (yes, like the MacArthur Park cake) and now that I’ve brought it back in to dry out (which, no, you wouldn’t do with a cake), I’ve forgotten how to wear it (and okay, now I’m making a sort of sweater analogy here) and lost track all the little places where I stretched it to make it fit right (because of course it’s a fat girl’s sweater), and things are a little itchy and uncomfortable at the moment but I’m sure I’ll break it back in eventually.

One of the stretchy things I haven’t been able to figure out is how we went to the gym all these months. Apparently the mornings used to be longer and I used to be not so tired. I know from experience that when you actually do start working out regularly,things sort of amazingly take care of themselves so that you do have more energy, and time expands, and your molecules totally rearrange themselves so that you are cuter and smarter. I know this, and yet still I wait for the perfect gym-going opportunity to appear in the mist like Brigadoon. Still, I’ve been biking to work whenever I can. Which is well, about once a week. Whatever. Brigadoon. I’ll let you know when I find it.

*Seriously, I forgot that the lyrics to that song were that demented. Donna Summer needs to be commended for her non-enunciation skills in her version.

Plug #1 for the day is for the Photo Project at Elastic Waist. I’ve got a photoset up, where the only Before shot is of me as a 4-year-old (because that really is Before lots of things). Plug #2 is for the new issue of BUST hitting the newsstands this week, because in addition to my usual Poptart column, there’s an interview with Debbie Harry conducted (via very long-distance phone call) by yours truly. BUY IT. And if it’s not at your newsstand yet and the previous issue is still there, the one with my column about Olivia Newton-John in it, you should buy that one, too. I’m just saying.

Filed Under: misc, personal, popcult, this thing I'm doing

Weathering

August 26, 2007 by Wendy

Hot dog! Hot damn! Summer is almost over, and I’ve been trying to make the most of it. Last weekend we went out to a drive-in theatre out in the boonies to see Superbad, partake of freaky dancing concession stand food, and take unauthorized photos. Did you know that you can’t take pictures at a drive-in, even when it is fabulously vintage and filled with all kinds of baffling retro curiosities? I guess the no-camera rule is to prevent people from recording bootleg video to sell to Armenia or wherever, but jeez, what a shame. Nobody busted on me back when I was taking (very bad) pictures of the screen during the free Tuesday night movie in Grant Park a few weeks ago, but I suppose there isn’t much of a demand for Douglas Sirk melodramas on the pirate DVD market, is there? Oh, and I also realized during our time at the drive-in that I do not know how to fully turn off the headlights on my car. Karen Black (my Subaru Forester) has “daytime running lights” that automatically click on when the car is in gear, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to disable them. This means I’ll never be able use my car to conduct nighttime espionage operations, and it also means that everyone who was watching The Bourne Ultimatum at the drive-in last weekend totally hates me for leaving halfway through. Er, sorry about that. But really, that movie was just a tad too intricate to watch through a windshield. I require broad comedy and garish camp classics for all my outdoor cinema needs, please!

We fared okay during the big storms on Thursday night. We were pretty lucky in that we didn’t lose power and we managed to avoid getting fried by lightning or flattened by falling trees. It was a hell of a night to do a reading, though. I slogged my way home from work through broken traffic lights, and then Chris drove me to the coffeehouse, which involved driving around downed branches and changing course several times in order to avoid those extra-fun flooded viaducts along Ravenswood Avenue. (I don’t know if they got as bad as this, but we weren’t going to take our chances.) My reading was decidedly enhanced by the chainsaw noise from outside as workers tried to dismantle a downed tree across the street.

It was a strange night. I’d heard some neighborhoods were hit pretty hard, but it wasn’t until this weekend that I found out that my friend Jenni Prokopy and her husband lost their home on Thursday when the roof of their building was torn off. I met Jenni about a decade ago at some networking event thingy that was pretty awful except for the fact that I got to smoke cigarettes with her, and I subscribed to her zine, and then years and years later we found ourselves at the same party. She’s done some great things with Chronic Babe, a site worth supporting even in non-disaster times, and any help or good energy you can send her way right now will be appreciated.

Now for more coffee. And really, if anyone knows how to shut the lights off in a damn Forester, let me know. I mean, it’s not that important, but what if I want to go on stakeout? Or what if I’m in a teen movie and need to commit elaborate late-night car-related pranks or other shenanigans? It sure would come in handy.

Filed Under: Chicago, misc, personal, popcult

F is for Funny and Fixx

August 21, 2007 by Wendy

Hey, there’s this thing tonight:

HaHaSmall2.jpg

(If you don’t know where the Hideout is and you can’t read the tiny print, it’s at 1354 W. Wabansia. And if you take a taxi and the cabbie is wondering whether you really want to go down that crappy back-alley-looking street, you do. Trust me.)

And if you miss me tonight, you can catch me again this Thursday night at The Fixx, at 3053 N. Sheffield. Double booked, baby!

If you come to either event you will get to see my new head. For months my friend Richard had been telling me to make an appointment at his salon to get something done about my color, and for months I kept putting it off, because my natural hair was a perfectly agreeable shade of All-Bran, and why mess with that? But finally last week I put my head in his hands and he gave me hair the color of deep sultry mystery, and also a new cut, and also special new crime-fighting powers.

The only problem was that I couldn’t wash my hair for nearly two days, which meant that my head was even dirtier than it had been the other weekend, back when I camped out in the middle of Michigan Duney Nowhere, because there I could at least jump in the lake and/or drink my unclean feelings away. It goes without saying I did both of plenty. It helped that both nights we were there the sky was clear and ridiculously full of stars and there were gorgeous meteor showers to keep me from dwelling on the showers I wasn’t having. But my unwashed days are over for now, which I guess is helpful to know if you’re coming to see me tonight or Thursday. Smell ya later, folks!

Filed Under: Chicago, misc, personal, promo

C is for camping and D is for dirty

August 9, 2007 by Wendy

Oh hurray, a new poet laureate who does not suck. Please read and dig Charles Simic. Under him, the Office of Poet Laureate will be awesome! It’ll be a room with doors that open to blank walls and dark mirrors! And there will be a blind dog and an empty coat with mice who whisper in the sleeves! Then again, can he really make things in Washington any more creepy and surreal than they already are? I kind of think not.

One Michigan camping trip down; one more to go! I don’t know if I mentioned that all our road trips this summer have also been camping trips. Back in April we impulsively bought a tent on sale at Dick’s Sporting Goods (who really needs to fix the typo in their sign, since after only ten minutes there it was abundantly clear that they’re supposed to be called Dicks, Sporting Goods, but never mind). And so for our Iowa and Wisconsin and Michigan trips we’ve loaded up the car with sleeping bags and an air mattress and set out like the Joads, except without all the abject despair and tin pans.

I know a lot of people find camping sort of horrifying, but it’s how my family did a lot of our summer vacations when I was growing up. And it was fun, though how much I truly enjoyed it depended on how old I was. From the age of five through about ten my attitude was: yay, let’s check out the rec center, maybe they have pinball and Tombstone Pizza! From eleven to sixteen it was: oh, fuck, I’m just gonna sit in the car and listen to my Walkman and constantly reapply my makeup using the rear-view mirror. Now it’s: wow, I totally have not checked my email for the past twelve hours. And part of me still can’t believe it all works, this tent thing; it’s crazy! Of course, all this time we’ve camped at places where there are showers and roads and picnic tables. THIS weekend, however, we’re going up to meet up with a big group of Chris’s friends from college and camp along the east shore of Lake Michigan. And instead of showers there will be… Lake Michigan. It’ll be some dirty, dirty camping, to be sure. I will be brave! And probably a little drunk, too.

Filed Under: misc, personal

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The Wilder Life on Flickr

Recent Press and Links

  • Essay: A Little House Adulthood For the American Masters documentary on Laura Ingalls Wilder, I contributed a piece to the PBS website about revisiting the Little House books.
  • Essay: The Christmas Tape (At Longreads.com) How an old audio tape of holiday music became a record of family history, unspoken rituals, and grief.
  • Q & A With Wendy McClure Publishers Weekly interview about editing, Wanderville and more.

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Where else to find Wendy

  • Candyboots Home of the Weight Watcher recipe cards
  • Malcolm Jameson Site (in progress) about my great-grandfather, a Golden Age sci-fi writer.
  • That Side of the Family My semi-secret family history blog
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