Today is Sunday. It is my favorite day of the week, mostly because it means I'm not doing a lick of work and, since I took on a freelance project of sorts - more on that soon, really - I don't have much real free time. My days are structured pretty rigidly, and that's actually proving to be pretty fantastic because now it means everything gets done when I say it gets done.

This is going to be a busy week - I'm flying out to NYC on Tuesday and Wednesday to meet a new client, my friend, Laura, is leaving and there's a going away party for her, my agent is going to be in town and, after five years, we're finally going to meet in person. My friend Dave is home from Hong Kong and he'll be joining us for some revelry. I'm taking Friday off to get a facial and a massage and hopefully sit at the newly renovated pool that's around the corner from my house.

Somehow facing down all of this means I need to eat biscuits and gravy this morning.

posted by Erin at 10:04 AM | | filed under: Random Stupidity

(This really is just a post for the Chicago-area sports fans, and those who know who this guy is. Everyone else? Search the archives or something.)

I've gone back and forth several times about whether or not I was going to address the whole Jay Mariotti controversy going on here in Chicago.

I've had quite a few friends email me and laugh, make mention of his latest tirade and wonder what I thought of it. For those who knew what it was like for me in those initial days of working for the Chicago Sun-Times, the name "Mariotti" was enough to induce vomiting in me. Working as an editor for a major metropolitan daily is not for the weak, and I think we learned it certainly wasn't for me. People like Jay Mariotti are a bit to blame.

They are, to put it nicely, demanding. But personalities are much of why I got into journalism in the first place, aside from all of that truth and justice and voice-of-the-people stuff. I liked people who were curmudgeonly and gruff and weird, and if getting into the door meant being called a "fucking moron," something I was called more than once in my days as an intern in the sports department at the Peoria Journal Star, then so be it.

(A word of advice to all of you who email me asking for career advice: go work in a sports department fetching high school box scores. This will teach you everything you need to know about working at a newspaper.)

So I was ready and willing to deal with Jay Mariotti when it came my time, though I assure you it was not easy. I'm pretty sure I got teary-eyed at home for the late-night haranguing that I was subjected to, for any number of reasons. Deep down, however, I got it. I did. It didn't excuse this behavior, but I got it. He is, after all, a nationally known, for good or for ill, sports columnist. But that's clearly not what motivated this guy, all this recognition. What seemed to drive Jay was that he wanted it right, he wanted it good and he wanted to deliver something of substance to his readers. He cared, more than almost anyone there in any section, except for Roger Ebert. One day I will show my grandchildren the email I got from Roger Ebert himself, because it remains to this days one of the things I cherish, right up there with my picture of me and Barack Obama.

Anyway, it was Mariotti's dogged determination to do a good job that I came to appreciate about him. You have to be deep in the trenches with someone to see this; you couldn't know what happens at 1 a.m. when the story is still being worked on, and you're far away, and at the mercy of someone you've never met in person. In my hands, quite literally, held his reputation, that which it is, and almost everything he holds sacred.

By the time I left, we'd just wrapped up launching a new feature on the site, one that had him filing even more often. We worked together pretty closely to ensure its success, so closely that he had to be reminded to copy the whole Web staff on emails because I did have days off and couldn't be there for every column. We established a rhythm of sorts, and the rants tapered off, and my interactions with him were nothing but wonderful. It was a total 180. When I quit, I was unsure how to tell Jay that I'd resigned, or even if I should. So I didn't.

Several days after I turned in my badge, I got an email from Jay on my personal account, letting me know he was really sorry to see me go, that he'd heard the news, and thanked me for all that I'd done, and that he understood just how hard those late nights are on people. He hoped, he said, that our paths would cross again someday.

My parents raised me to believe that if you see a man getting kicked around, you don't join in. The courageous, right, moral thing to do is to champion if you get the chance. It is not enough to know that you know a different side to a man's character; you have a voice and you use it. I know why people feel the way they do about him; I know why most men I know email me to talk smack about Mariotti. But the thing is?

I really like Jay Mariotti. I am probably the only person in Chicago who will admit to that, but there it is.

There is much being made about what it's like to work with him, especially if you're a guy on the sports desk. I don't envy those bastards one bit, never have. I was not surprised to hear that that situation had gone public, as it was a looooong time coming. Those guys are fantastic and talented and they'd had enough. But I worked with him, too, and ...

... well, you get it.

I don't miss newspapers, and the life that goes with it. Sometimes, though? I miss working with characters like Mariotti. I really do.

posted by Erin at 12:37 AM | | filed under: Supastah

Hear Me Out
Frou Frou
Details

I join the queue on your answerphone
And all I am - is holding breath
Just pick up I know you're there
Can't you hear - I'm not myself

Oh go ahead and lie to me
You could say anything
Small talk will be - just fine
Your voice is everything
We owe it to love
And it all depends on you

So listen up - this sun hasn't set
I refuse to believe that it's only me feeling
Just hear me out - I'm not over you yet
It's love on the line can you handle it

So how do I do normal
The smile I fake - the permanent wave of
Cue cards and fix it kits
Can't you tell - I'm not myself

I'm a slow motion accident
Lost in coffee rings - and fingerprints
I don't - wanna feel - anything
But i do
And it all comes back to you

So listen up - this sun hasn't set
(I refuse to believe that it's only me feeling)
Just hear me out - I'm not over you yet
(It's love on the line can you handle it?)

So listen up
Look at me straight
Just hear me out
Don't make me wait
I'm not myself
I can't take this
Love's on the line
Is that your final answer

I join the queue on your answerphone
And all i am - is holding breath
Just pick up i know you're there......

So listen up - this sun hasn't set
(I refuse to believe that it's only me feeling)
Just hear me out - I'm not over you yet
(It's love on the line can you handle it?)

posted by Erin at 10:13 PM | | filed under: iPod

Hi, Katherine Heigl?

Do you know what happens when TV actors get too big for their britches? They become David Caruso. And I'm pretty certain you don't want that. No one on "Grey's" had a good storyline this year, Toots, because the show is turning into "ER" faster than you can say "afib," and let's be honest, the best acting you ever did on that show was from the bathroom floor at Meredith's house after Denny died, when you didn't say much at all.

Even then, I don't understand why you won an Emmy.

Anyway, just something you might want to think about, especially considering all of the rumors that have been floating around for years about the fact that you're kind of, a little bit, a bitch. This, dear girl, isn't helping your case.

posted by Erin at 07:50 PM | | filed under: Supastah

Guess whose fiance just got her into see Liz Phair perform ALL of Exile in Guyville in two weeks at The Vic?

I am ten shades of over her recent work, just like everyone else, but that album was a huge part of my high school, early college years and to watch her perform the whole damn thing live is making me happier than just about anything I can get my brain around.

Just when I think Scott can't be any cooler and more thoughtful he goes and does this.

I'm super busy these days, and focus is of the essence. I didn't make it down to Peoria last weekend - weather, my sister was out of town and I was watching her dog, atrocious gas prices - any my free time is about to become virtually non-existent but that's totally OK because the project I've just signed on to do is fun and cool and creative and I'll tell you all about it very soon.

posted by Erin at 01:15 PM | | filed under: Music

Last night I was at my friend Jen's house, having dinner, when my phone rang. It was Amy.

Amy was, up until last year, a lead anchor for the CBS affiliate in Peoria, Ill. We met back in 1997, when we both were covering a Holocaust memorial, and immediately bonded over shoes. I will admit to you that up until meeting Amy I had a bias against broadcast reporters. I was a newspaper reporter, after all, and the assumption was all TV reporters were fluffy airheads. But then I met Amy, and her coworkers, and began dating one of the sports anchors at her station, and forever changed was my opinion of my television sisters and brothers.

Plus? They could drink me under a table.

For one very awesome year in my twenties, my life centered around my friends in Peoria - all of whom were involved in the news business in some shape or form. I'd brought Amy and her crew into the circle of friends I had at the Peoria Journal Star and everyone ended up becoming great friends. We worked odd hours, drank too much, sang too much karaoke ... it was a good time. But in 1999 I knew it had to end. I missed home, I was going nowhere quickly at the paper and for as much fun as it was to live as if there was no growing up to do, I knew Peoria was not the place for me. I needed something bigger, more challenging. A lifetime covering breaking stories in the collar counties of Peoria just didn't seem appealing to me.

I left and my life changed pretty dramatically, but exactly in the fashion I'd hoped it would. What never seemed to change, though, was the connection I had with the friends I'd made down there, and while I remain closer to some than others (Hi Dave Moll! I will write you back tonight I promise.), there isn't a one of them who wouldn't have my back for me in a moment if I needed them.

One of those people is Omar - not to be confused with another journalist friend named Omar - and that man lets nothing escape his notice. He will harangue and harass until you submit to his will. It's just his way, though I'm sort of convinced he's still got me on notice for the day he spent with me back in '98, when Joe Carlson broke my heart, and Omar and Dave sat with me in shifts for 24 hours while I cried and chain-smoked. Last week Omar sent me a message on Facebook, asking me if I was planning on going to Peoria for some Guild event, which of course I was not.

I've still got friends, and family, down there, but it's been five years since I've visited, a decade since I've been a presence there, and crashing a party my old coworkers are throwing isn't my idea of a good way to spend a Sunday. Especially with gas prices being what they are.

"So I'm at a Journal Star party right now," Amy said. "What's this I hear that you're coming down here on Sunday and why didn't you tell me?!"

Oh shit.

"Karen McDonald told me you're coming down here ..."

"But wait, Amy ..." I tried to stop her.

"... and I said 'I would know if E Shea is coming down here' and she also told me that you are getting remarried and ..."

"Amy, well ..." Stopping her from talking is nearly impossible. Believe you me.

"... I told her that I would know if E Shea was getting remarried and OH MY GOD ARE YOU GETTING MARRIED TO SCOTT?"

She actually named my ex-boyfriend, Shannon, for reasons that are unclear to me, since I dated that guy for two seconds back in 2000 and Amy has actually hung out with Scott.

So apparently Omar told people I was going down there Sunday, and people whom I've not even thought of in ten years are telling my friends things about my whereabouts that I should have and now I'm in huge trouble.

And I'm heading down to Peoria on Sunday.

posted by Erin at 08:36 AM | | filed under: Random Stupidity