Something Which Shouldn't Bother Me but Does
When actors who have done well talk about how fucked up it was to live in Chicago. Their apartments were always horrible, their landlord and neighbors were weird foreigners, everything smelled, etc.* Maybe I'm just sensitive, but there's this undercurrent of, "Thank God I don't live in that hellhole anymore." Right, because LA and New York are hospital clean and everyone is perfectly pleasant to one another.
I'll allow that Chicago was a different place in, say, the 70s, but Jesus, I've lived in some shitholes here and the worst wasn't all THAT bad. I certainly didn't act as if the city was set up as a playground for my transplanted white, middle-class butt.
If you get a foothold in the arts through Chicago, you should talk about it as if it's the proverbial shining city on the hill for the rest of your life. This city does not allow you to sit still.
I think this is partially inspired by the resentful Chicago backlash I'm picking up in the media. Suck it up East and West Coasts.
*30 Rock nicely parodied this when Liz and Jenna discuss living in the nonexistent Little Armenia neighborhood, where the neighbors "sacrificed a goat in the middle of the street."
I'll allow that Chicago was a different place in, say, the 70s, but Jesus, I've lived in some shitholes here and the worst wasn't all THAT bad. I certainly didn't act as if the city was set up as a playground for my transplanted white, middle-class butt.
If you get a foothold in the arts through Chicago, you should talk about it as if it's the proverbial shining city on the hill for the rest of your life. This city does not allow you to sit still.
I think this is partially inspired by the resentful Chicago backlash I'm picking up in the media. Suck it up East and West Coasts.
*30 Rock nicely parodied this when Liz and Jenna discuss living in the nonexistent Little Armenia neighborhood, where the neighbors "sacrificed a goat in the middle of the street."