By Marc Heiden, since 1997.
See also: a novel about a monkey.

So, I have kidney stones, and I've had them for damn near a week, and I've got Slade's "Here It Is Merry Christmas" all cued up for when the bastards finally pass. This is a fairly incontrovertible sign of age, I guess. In those quizzes about how old you really are, admitting to kidney stones immediately sets the base to 50. I'm thinking if I could take one of the judges to go to a monkey park with me, I might be able to negotiate that down to 40, but if they take a close look at my diet, they're going to declare me legally dead and call it a day. I have to keep away from those quizzes.

I don't have a problem with every sign of aging. I thought I found a grey hair in December and I got all excited, but I couldn't find it again when I tried to show it to someone. I assumed there would be more to follow, giving me a distinguished salt-and-pepper look and, with it, increased credibility for my schemes. As it turns out, however, that was merely the first signal that my body has decided to launch a full-scale campaign of betrayal. Does it really think it can win this battle? Too-mortal flesh, I will fucking transcend you. Alas, for the moment, I am out of pills for these kidney stones, and disinclined to pay for another bottle. I don't even know what those pills were doing anyway.

One thing that I should mention is that the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Rogers Park sold this week. So that's good news. I did not manage to submit my bid for the house before the auction was over. My idea was to attach retro-rockets to the sides of the house and use it as a space-ship. I don't know if that would have been acceptable. Still, everyone seemed happy with the results of the auction. This Frank Diliberto character clearly knows his business; I have an old shoe that I would like for him to market as a condo, and I think that he could do it. If we brought the same reporter out to do a story, it might look something like this:

Frank Lloyd Wright House M. Heiden's Shoe Is No Easy Sell
By Don Babwin, Associated Press Writer by M. Heiden

CHICAGO - If you think selling a house shoe designed worn by the most one of the famous architect guys in American history is easy, think again.

After several months on the market, a 1915 Frank Lloyd Wright house 2003 M. Heiden shoe on Chicago's North Side is going on the auction block, with bids starting at $750,000 — less than a third of the original $2.5 million asking price.

A few years ago, another Wright house Heiden shoe sold at auction in Cincinnati was left in a dumpster in the alley for only about $400,000 free.

"There was always a relatively small market for them," said Ronald Scherubel, executive director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy some hobo. "Even when he (Wright) (Heiden) was alive wearing them they weren't for everybody."

But the hard sell on Wright houses Heiden shoes runs deeper than their historical lack of appeal.

First, owners often can't remodel or even paint the homes the shoes without permission from some government official being crazy.

Chicago designated the four-bedroom Emil Bach House a landmark in 1977, so both the city and the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois must now sign off on any substantial changes, Scherubel said.

"That house shoe is really intended to stay that house be an expensive condo," said Frank Diliberto, senior vice president of Inland Real Estate Auction, which is handling the sale.

Then, there's the way trips Wright Heiden laid out wore his Prairie-style homes basketball shoes on and their size how they smelled afterward — usually on the small stank side.

"His philosophy was different," he said.

In the Emil Bach house Heiden shoe, the kitchen foot-space is bigger than in most Wright homes shoes, said Inland Real Estate spokesman Darryl Cater. Still, he said, "Frank Lloyd Wright some Malaysian child designed kitchens this shoe for servants for basketball players."

Some of Wright's early homes Heiden's shoes also have developed expensive structural problems, such as sagging roofs visible toes.

The biggest problem greatest asset the Emil Bach House Heiden shoe might have is its location.

When it was built bought, it was a country home with an unobstructed view of Lake Michigan at a store. Today, it's on a busy street lined with apartments and businesses in the city's Rogers Park neighborhood at an office.

If the home the shoe were in were taken to Oak Park, a Chicago suburb with a large concentration of Wright homes, it would have sold for about $2.1 million be near a house that sold for about $2.1 million, said Ken Goldberg, a real estate agent who tried to sell the house shoe for months before Inland Real Estate stepped in.

"Nobody pays that in East Rogers Park lives in a shoe," he said of the house shoe. It sold two years ago for $1 million $75.

But Inland's Diliberto says the neighborhood fact that it is a shoe won't dissuade people who want to own one of just 380 two Wright houses Heiden shoes in the United States. The company has heard from prospective buyers across the country.

"This," Diliberto said, "is a chance to buy a piece of history."

FINIS

I can't believe I just wrote that. Jesus, what will be the third entry in this strange trilogy?

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