Okay, if this was in a tv show, it would be wildly implausible. However, it's in today's CHICAGO SUN-TIMES so make what you will of it.

Kids at YMCA swim meet run into cross-dressing ball

Several of the kids' angry parents clashed with participants in a transgender fashion show, which had been under way at the New City YMCA since about midnight, resulting in a chaotic melee that was eventually broken up by private security guards and East Chicago District police.
A YMCA member had reserved the entire facility, at 1515 N. Halsted, from 11 p.m. Saturday through 8 a.m. Sunday for a fashion show and ball, which featured cross-dressing and transgender models in a competition similar to the ones shown in the 1991 documentary "Paris Is Burning." But the facility had also been booked to host the youth swim meet, scheduled to begin at 7 a.m. Sunday. When the swimmers -- mostly elementary and junior high school-age kids -- and their parents started showing up shortly after 6 a.m., many of the parents were upset to see the "House of Escada" fashion show and dance in full swing.

I got an interesting lesson in profiling tonight.

By "profiling" I mean making assumptions about a person based on their clothing or behavior. For instance, seeing young, black men wearing hooded sweatshirts one might "profile" them as being criminals.

Tonight was the "big gig" at the old town school of folk music. When we did this before, in April, it was all the dance students. The carribbean people, the banghra people, the flamenco people, we were all together. But tonight it was a bunch of people playing stringed insturments plus us hip hop people.

So basically, we were performing in front of the people who are totally opposed to hip hop and everything it stands for (sampling, djs, electronic toots and beeps, drum machines, etc.) So it was not an especially warm response.

Anyway, my friend Salah is in both dance and guitar. There were no other twofers, as far as I could tell. So he danced with us (we were 1st on the running order, after us they unrolled the oriental carpet on the stage for proper folkie effect) and then he was going to perform with his guitar class. All the other dance class folks left but I hung around to be supportive and everything.

Salah grew up in Tunisia and has lived in Paris and Stockholm before coming to Chicago. Next on his list is Sao Paulo in Brazil. Anyway, he has all sorts of interesting opinions. For instance, he is impressed with the Chicago police; how very fair they are. It's safe to say that no one who has spent much time with local cops would describe them as being especially concerned with fairness. But Salah, who earns his living driving a cab, is favorably impressed.

Anyway, it's "big gig" night so all the classes are getting up and, as a class, doing a performance. This goes guitar, guitar, guitar, guitar, then, to break up the monotony, they schedule a ukulele class.

The ukulele guys play and sing a bogus Hawaiian song about a princess who is overly willing to share her papayas...it's all "P" words and mildly double entendre and the audience chuckles agreably.

"They are jews?" Salah asked me, meaning the ukulele ensemble.

This fascinates me. After I told him no, they aren't jews (like I have the foggiest idea but on principle which is to say right there, on the spot, I feel like I should vouch for their non-jew-ness since I was guessing that him declaring them to be jewish wasn't, you know, a compliment and I should speak up for them being, uh, just plain American?????) I wondered...is there something about seeing men singing corny songs with ukuleles seems, somehow, jewish?

I was into all that vaudeville stuff when I was a kid...Marx brothers, Fanny Brice, etc. And, when looking back on that, I suppose that many of those entertainers were, indeed, Jewish.

So is that something that some households learn? In Tunisia, say, seeing a corny comedian, to make it clear "He's a jew, you know." In the same way that a bigot in the U.S. might think that Nat King Cole is a very classy acting colored fellow but, at heart, nothing more than a colored fellow.

I also thought that, as far as stereotypes go, if I had to choose one for myself, I would choose "he just wants to make me laugh." Sadly, as I am not jewish but rather tennesseean, the stereotype I end up with is "doesn't he spell well?"

I am reading "Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church" by James M. Ault, Jr. Really, I recommend this book. I am reading it as background material but really, it is quite riveting and surprising and overall fascinating in the tradition of the very best storytelling.

I had told my Magazine instructor that I wanted to do my final project on gay Nascar fans and she excitedly agreed. Gay Nascar has been a conversational showstopper of mine for some time now and every time I trot it out the response is always "Dude! You gotta write that!"

But, you see, it's a trick. I met a gay Nascar fan (and corresponded with a few online) and I learned about the sport itself. So here's how it works...I say "Gay Nascar!" and, after pausing appropriately in the stunned silence, I go into my 5 minutes about Nascar and why it is, in fact, fascinating and full of drama rather than just boring-ass driving in circles around and around.

My explanation of why Nascar is kind of cool is fairly compelling, I think. But saying "gay Nascar" is just a trick to get my foot in the door. I perk up the ears by saying those two words "gay nascar" thereby earning the right to go on for a bit about what Nascar itself is.

This is the problem, gay people participate in Nascar pretty much like everybody else which is to say that they watch it on television. They don't do it gay-ly. They do it alone or with roommates or family members but they don't wear pink boas or dish or otherwise carry on in a way that lends itself to contemporary journalism. Ultimately, saying that there are gay Nascar fans is like saying there are gay customers at Wal-Mart. And what do those gay customers do??? Why they get a cart and they...

Yawn.

Anyway, while googling-away on Gay Nascar, I tried all sorts of other searches (Gay Blue Collar, Gay Red State, Gay Rural) etc. And "Gay Evangelical" returned a motherlode.

There seem to be two sorts of gay evangelicals...there are the "Ex Gay" sort. This school of thought says that we are all sinners (although sodomy is especially horrible as a sin...if you had the choice between murder and sodomy, you are better off going with the murder, at least per. this crowd) and that homosexuality is a sin of choice, like alcoholism. And, like alcohol, someone might always feel the urge but, with enough prayer, etc. the urge can be overcome.

The second sort is the openly gay, openly evangelical sort. Which says that they don't have to be cured, they are just fine. Which I find fascinating.

Anyway, I'm doing some background reading. Although I grew up around fundamentalist Christians in Tennessee, my understanding was limited to "those people are weirdos." Which is not a very satisfactory explanation of anything.

Indeed, as author Ault makes clear, urbane people have been insisting that fundamentalism is on its last legs forever...that surely modernism will wipe out these backwards people.

In fact, fundamentalism is a response to modernism.

One of the key ideas in the book is that fundamentalists operate on a model of community reciprocity. Think of a village...I help you get in your crops, you, in turn, share some of the butchered hog. Part of the element is that we share with each other, all the time and without being asked, and the other part is that we didn't choose to be this way with one another. We have to be this way, we are in the same village. It's like an arranged marriage.

The modern world, on the other hand, is not like an arranged marriage. It's like a love match. In the modern world I might labor in a factory while you work in a bakery. Maybe we can meet each other's needs but maybe we just need to stay out of each other's way. The people who help me, the people who watch my children or the ones I bring dinner, those are people that I chose and they chose me back. They are my friends, not my family.

Arranged marriages sound kind of appalling but they have an advantage...you don't get left out of the system. Out there on your own? You might make a love match but you might choose poorly or you might be left out altogether.

This system of reciprocity gets lost in contemporary society. Fundamentalism is a way of recreating the system.

Part of making such a system work is that there is considerable pressure on individuals to conform to the desires and needs of the group. In the city, your choice is your choice, whatever. But in the village, your choice indirectly becomes my choice as well. Your morals become like cigarrette smoke, second hand exposure to them can be dangerous.

So if you are gay and call your relationship a marriage, that does actually feel like a real threat to these Christians. Because then how does the reciprocity work???

I love how Bush is going to Halifax to thank those who helped out U.S. travelers on 9/11.
First of all I like the idea that you can just mention 9/11 and everyone will be so distracted they will forget that they loathe you. And secondly, I like the absolute sincerity of the gesture...after all it has only been, what, like 38 months since that happened? Since that part of Canada is soooooooo far away, you can see why it took him so long to get around to being appreciative.

Jesus, but I haven't posted anything in a long time.

Alex has a note on his blog asking why some people target winners (the longtime Jeopardy champion as a case in point)

Which, in turn, reminds me of a great piece in the NYT about the inventors of the board game Cranium.

Most classic board games are all about winning and losing. When you play Monopoly or Risk or Sorry! there is always someone crowing in triumph while others quietly sulk in defeat.

in contrast, the philosophy behind game design at Cranium is to produce games "where everyone has a moment to shine"

(they) design games that no single player can dominate; at some point,every player will be the hero. ''And then they have that moment of glow, that moment of shine, that moment where everyone celebrates them,'' (co-founder Richard Tait) says, speaking practically in the cadence of a preacher.

That makes the games particularly appealing to young children, who can be unhinged by the sting of losing. And for parents, it means that playtime is unlikely to end in tantrums. You can win a Cranium game, but no one really cares. It is, as one Cranium designer delicately puts it, ''a softer win.''

The article states that sales of "Legacy" games (Battleship, Clue, etc.) are to Baby Boomers or Gen Xers but that kids don't request these games. If they want to play a win/lose game, computers are more satisfying.

If, on the other hand, the point of playing a game is to spend time with one another, then indeed why NOT have a game that emphasizes strengths, that lets everyone feel a sense of accomplishment?

With thanks to Wonkette, I bring this news from our neighbor, Indiana:

John Hostettler, the Congressman representing the 8th district of Indiana, has been convinced by local religious groups to introduce legislation in the House that would change the name of an Interstate 69 extension to a more moral sounding number.

There are plans to extend the interstate from Indianapolis through southwestern Indiana all the way through Texas into Mexico in the coming years. While most believe this highway will be good for the state’s economy, religious conservatives believe “I-69” sounds too risqué and want to change the interstate’s number.

Hostettler, a proponent of the interstate extension, agrees. “Every time I have been out in the public with an ‘I-69’ button on my lapel, teenagers point and snicker at it. I have had many ask me if they can have my button. I believe it is time to change the name of the highway. It is the moral thing to do.”

I suppose there's no point in pretending that I'm working right now.

What I am doing is reading an amazing story in Willamette Week (Portland Ore's alternative newsweekly) about Tonya Harding-10 Years Later.

To recap...Tonya's Boyfriend, Jeff Gillooly recruited a friend, Shawn Eckhardt to bang up figure skating rival Nancy Kerrigan, thereby improving the chances for Harding.

Tonya herself is just depressing, however Gillooly and Eckhardt rock.

Asked about the thwacking, (Gillooly) says Americans just don't understand the skating world.

"Figure skating was a very political sport," he explains. "That was our way of trying to level the playing field."

"There was never supposed to be an assault," he continues. "Originally it was just supposed to be a death threat."

and the sidekick...

As the owner of World Bodyguard Services, Eckardt boasted of private investigation work in Costa Rica, demolishing Peruvian pipelines and guarding celebrities. In reality, the 28-year-old drove a '76 Mercury, lived at his parents' house in Lents, and collected Star Trek videos.

The artist formerly known as Eckardt no longer exists--because he changed his name to Brian Sean Griffith.

State records list Griffith as the owner of Applied Information Systems Inc. (www.appliedinfosys.com), a network company whose motto is "Imagineering the future."

The company's suite turns out to be a third-floor walkup in a seedy Gresham apartment complex. When WW visited, a few men were tinkering with the greasy innards of an aging Oldsmobile, a couple loaded an old mattress into a '70s Ford, and half-dressed kids ran screaming all around the place.

Though the shades were still drawn when we knocked on the door at 1 pm, it was answered by a bald, portly 37-year- old with long sideburns, clad only in green running shorts.

Are you Brian Sean Griffith? we asked.

"Yes," he replied.

Are you also Shawn Eckardt?

"Go away!" he yelled, slamming the door.

D	Delightful
R	Respectable
E	Explosive
W	Weird
R	Realistic
E	Exquisite
Y	Yum
N	Noisy
O	Organic
L	Legendary
D	Delicious
S	Sweet

Name / Username:

Name Acronym Generator
From Go-Quiz.com
***

Thanks to Josh for suggesting the above. I'm pleased that two of my letters reference how tasty I am, while a 3rd ("sweet") could also be interpreted that way as well.

I'm a fan of Natalie Goldberg, author of several how-to-write-and-be-enlightened books. I am realizing that currently, I'm in a period of blogging only on Thursdays.

I go to school on Thursdays instead of going to work and then, at 4 p.m. I go to my shrink. So on Thursdays I feel, as Goldberg says, like a cow needing to be milked. Sometimes writing is like milking, as the simile goes, you need the milk and the cow feels better for you having done it. But most of the time writing is a chore, a burden.

At least 3 times this term (it's not even Thanksgiving yet) I have come up against the Thursday deadline without material to polish. No, I face Thursday with material to assemble, to craft, to hone. I know better than this. I, in fact, have DONE better than this. Yet I persist.

For some reason this term, this term where I am only taking two classes, two classes that should be SO up my alley "Feature Writing" and "Magazine Writing" and it's pulling fucking teeth every time.

Worse. I have two instructors (duh, two classes) one of whom is cool and groovy and has the "world beat" beat for the Chicago Sun Times and one of whom is bottle blonde, in her 50's, and has the real estate beat for the (republican) Chicago Tribune.

I am so, so much more invested in the blonde's class than the world beat's class.

I don't like this about myself but there it is. I agree with "worldbeat's" world view but the truth is I didn't go to class last week (too depressed over the election). We had to declare our topic for our final (e.g. most-worked-on) project today and I grabbed a topic that I was interested in, oh, 18 months ago (Gay enthusiasm for NASCAR).

Real Estate on the other hand, real estate reminds me of my high school algebra teacher. I have zero affinity for math and, in fact, this teacher accepted that no one was enthusiastic but, rather, everyone needed to be DRILLED.

Today my bottle-blond instructor said that she was fed up, just plain fed up with our class. We had to go around the room, one side to the other and each repeat this phrase.

"The word 'Internet" is capitalized"

This was dorky, breathtakingly dorky. On the other hand I remembered to capitalize Internet. And I appreciate that she took the effort to preface the whole exercise with a lengthy anecdote about how some classes develop tics that annoy her.

At some point she mentioned that she was raised in Kentucky and perhaps it is this Southern-ness that I am responding to.

Bless our hearts, every one.

Well I'm less depressed than I was yesterday. It's hard to not feel dissed by my country. From last night's THE DAILY SHOW:

If you want to have gay sex or visit a library, it's probably your last night to do those things. . . I'll be killing two birds with one stone.

Bush just ended a press conference where he announced that he has earned political capital and he intends to spend it. Considering how entitled he felt after not winning in 2000, this is a little disturbing.

From today's NYT, a report of a phone call from Dr. James Dobson to the White House:

Dr. Dobson said he told the (White House) that many Christians believed the country "on the verge of self-destruction" as it abandoned traditional family roles. He argued that "through prayer and the involvement of millions of evangelicals, and mainline Protestants and Catholics, God has given us a reprieve."

"But I believe it is a short reprieve," he continued, adding that conservatives now had four years to pass an amendment banning same-sex marriage, to stop abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, and most of all to remake the Supreme Court. "I believe that the Bush administration now needs to be more aggressive in pursuing those values, and if they don't do it I believe they will pay a price in four years," he said.

Heavy snowfall in the South Plains (Lubbock, Amarillo) of Texas yesterday. NOT in New York, NOT in San Francisco. Fucking Texas. Not quite hell and not quite frozen over.

Talk about heavenly reprieves...

I've signed up for National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo which sounds kind of like a zippy anime character). It means writing a 175 page (50,000 word) novel between November 1st and November 30, 2004.

From the NaNoWriMo FAQ:

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

This works out to around 6.5 double-spaced pages per day. Which is not all that much (my smallest assignments for school run 2 pages and I have to worry about them being good).

On a side note: it's Halloween Vest Day here at work. One woman has a vest with cartoon ghosts, witches, etc. On the back is a cartoon haunted house and, along the bottom, right above her butt it says "Do you dare to enter?"

Drinking coffee and waking up.

Here's a link to Allerca. And what is Allerca you might ask?

ALLERCA expects to produce the world’s first hypoallergenic cats by 2007. Using patented genetic technologies to suppress the allergen will make an ALLERCA cat the ideal companion for people with allergies.

You can put down a deposit now if you'd like; the completed cats should go for about $3,500.

more coffee please

I checked out THE STRANGER, Seattle's excellent alternative weekly (Dan Savage is the boss there) and here is a photo spread of easy-to-make Halloween costumes. I especially like the kid dressed as the torture victim from Abu Ghraib.

Greetings to all.

It's Thursday evening. Thursday I go to school from 9 until 3. I check out the library from 3 until 4, get shrunk from 4 to 5, engage in some shopping from 5 till 6 (that one's not on the schedule but I just seem to do that. In the old days my shopping jones used to be taken care of by the library...a big backpack full of loaner things would scratch that itch. The library isn't doing it anymore, isn't doing the jones I mean. About $30, that does the jones.)

Thursday feels like I'm entitled to a treat at the end of it. It's new, this sort of Thursday, I've only been doing them for 4 weeks now and it seems like there ought to be a cookie in the offing.

The planned cookie was tonight's screening of the special THE OFFICE on BBC America. Sadly, it's not bad but I have no problem wandering into the kitchen for extended spells to mash potatoes and I keep getting distracted by the GOURMET cookbook I picked up at the library. Cookbooks are good tv-watching things. I like to keep one open while the tube is on and I flip through it, as though I'm just on the verge of roasting some parsnips in a wasabi-oil glaze. Sometimes I keep a stack of index cards next to me, there on the coffee table and I make lists, lists like "Wasabi powder. Parsnips." that suggest that I'm going to actually prepare the goddamn recipe.

But no, probably not.

Anyway, sitting and eating in front of the tube, glancing at recipes and making notes just isn't doing it for me tonight so I turn to the blogosphere.

First of all, my beloved Alex found a great story about rodents online. I should add a link and make it a proper blog but I'm tired (all that school! all that therapy! all that shopping! all those mashed potatoes) so you are just going to have to take my word for it.

The story was about the custom of eating guinea pigs in Peru...they do indeed eat them and, having been encouraged to develop crops other than, you know, coccaine, Peruvians have spent the past 34 years (the article is weirdly specific about that number) developing a jucier, meatier guinea pig for export to the U.S.

So on one hand I like the incredible optimism of this 34-year-long quest. "The reason others don't eat lots of yummy guinea pig is that the animal is not sufficiently juicy and meaty! Get to work!" Lots of juicy females being bred with meaty males, in hope for that elusive delectable guinea pig.

I should point out that, according to other online explorations (which again are going unlinked due to the aforementioned reasons) I learned that guinea pigs eat their own turds. So I'm guessing their meat is really delightful.

Finally, the story Alex sent me mentions that the Spanish imperialists who conquered spain gave reproductions of classic paintings to artists in Ecuador, encouraging them to reproduce them. They did but in their version of The Last Supper, Jesus and the disciples are sitting down to a feast of guinea pig.

What's not to love about that?

I am very into the Apartment Therapy blog which is sort of a home decor blog.
I don't have cats anymore but if I did I would absolutely make one of these scratching posts. It's such an elegant solution, I can't believe I've never seen something like it before.

Tennessee making news again, this time regarding the Friends of Spring Hill Library flea market, held on the lawn of Spring Hill Presbyterian Church.

From THE TENNESSEEAN newspaper:

Among the dozens of booths set up on the lawn of Spring Hill Presbyterian Church was one vendor promoting personal pleasure toys and intimate products for women and couples.

''The most questionable item we sold was a vibrating bath sponge that looks like a rubber ducky. It's the cutest thing.''

City Administrator Ken York said Hightree will be cited as having violated the city's sexually oriented business ordinance.

The ordinance, which carries a $50 fine, prohibits ''presentation of materials … depicting, describing or specifying anatomical areas'' in places where they can be observed by the public.

love the specificity of that ordinance..."describing or specifying anatomical areas"???

I'm proud, mostly, of being Tennesseean. But sometimes that wears thin. The alternative weekly THE NASHVILLE SCENE has reported on the renovations at TPAC (Tennessee Performing Arts Center).

...what should have been a festive day promoting a collective sense of pride in the arts was a bit marred by the sight of a very conspicuous 40-foot-wide floor mural with several badly misspelled words. The mural, crafted in seven shades of blue terrazzo, features nine quotations about the artistic process.
But the mural takes some artistic license with the spelling of certain words, historical figures and sayings. The goofs include "Napolean Boneparte" instead of "Napoleon Bonaparte" and "concious" instead of "conscious." Then there's the Latin phrase that reads "Arts Gratia Artist," which should actually be "Ars Gratia Artis." Other than that, everything was perfect.

The article does go on to note that, amazingly, they spelled Alexander Solzhenitsyn correctly.

I feel proud of my friend Lillian who ran a marathon on Sunday. I'm proud of her for running the damn thing, of course (and all the attendant training, resisting of resistance, overall rockstar-ness required to do so) and I'm envious of this passage on her blog - such an excellent description of a feeling I've had but never thought to put into words (and I doubt I could have done it this elegantly):

Sunday was what anyone getting up at 6:30am on a Sunday would expect. Dark, raw feeling, all dewy & calm, the way cities can be when they're off the clock.

The NYT has a story today about how the Disney Stores aren't working so well and that they are revamping themselves as being more interactive (you, if you are a little girl, can spend the day doing princess stuff...having a tea party, doing a make-your-own-tiara, etc.)

The story's author tracked down, god help us, Camile Paglia to weigh in on the topic.

"It is a reaction to the hypersexualized environment where young women are expected to dress like strippers or whores.That should not be the standard for a 10-year-old girl."

Whew glad we got that one cleared up.

Greetings from boring-ass Central Florida.

I'm sitting in a ballroom of a Marriott just in case a delegate comes by with a question. Then I will tell them that there's no-one here who can answer their question; try back later.

Anyway, I am making my way through the bazillion news stories I've emailed to myself over the past four weeks but haven't had an opportunity to peruse. I read a great thing in the NYT about Wizmark which bills itself as "the interactive urinal communicator". It's a fancy urinal puck/screen thing that can talk, sing, make flashing lights, whatever when activated by a "visitor".

My friend Lisa and her partner, Ginny, just gave birth to twins (it was an IVF kind of thing...I guess the PC thing is not to wonder how two women managed to concieve but there you go) and I've been wondering what to get them.

There is a bunch of ugly-ass baby gear out there, let me tell you. Pastel everything and wretched little appliques and it's all a disaster.

There is a chichi baby store in the neighborhood where my office is and they have little baby beanies in their display window that say BOOB MAN on them. Funny.

I checked out Nordstrom's Rack today and found two hoodie sweatshirts, impossbily small ("12 months" says the label) and I got them. One is navy, one is dark green, I would wear either one of them if they were sized for 421 months rather than for 12.

I remember reading a Ms. Manners book (back in my childhood when the idea of doing something like reading Ms. Manners, for pleasure, made sense) where the topic of Baby Talk came up. Ms. Manners recommendation was that you speak to the infant about adult topics rather than speak in a childish "izza widdle" voice. Because the contrast of you saying "if you don't involve the world community when you go after a dictator, then you can hardly expect the world to rally around..." to an infant who sits staring at you in a funny old-man-yet-newborn sort of way is funny enough, certainly funnier than talking baby talk and has the advantage that the kid might pick up something here or there.

So it should be with their clothing. I think it's questionable to dress twins identically but a navy hoodie and a dark green hoodie mean that these kids get the classics, early on. If they were older they might choose to modify them by safety-pinning a band's logo or by adding studs along the shoulder. But they are cute not because they have an embroidered Eyore on the pocket but because they look so ready to attend the next Indigo Girls concert.

The past few days have made me think a lot about whether or not I want to have kids. I'm in love with Alex who has actually said, out loud, "I don't want to be 35 and having my first kid". For me to be 35 and having my first kid would mean I would need to get on the ball, like NOW, I would have less than 90 days. So that's a no-go.

Oddly, before Alex had mentioned that, I had always thought of being a dad as being a 50ish thing to do. I would have some money then ( a mysterious process would be taking place between here and there you see) and I would feel confident enough in the world that I could take on a whole other human, one who really needed me in unbelievably tangible ways, and that would be good, not a disaster.

I remember reading Chris Rock, after 9/11, saying that the disaster had prompted him to want to have kids with his wife, saying "you need a product". And as much as I feel I should hate it, I like that idea. Making a baby, or a few, with a partner. You can argue, and no doubt I will, that we have evolved beyond that. But there is no doubt that we have at the very least evolved to that and I am not certain how I take my place within that vast, vast grid.

In the meantime, I've made a folder in my internet bookmarks called "Baby Clothes".

Drew Barrymore was just on THE DAILY SHOW demonstrating why it is that people have a contempt for the liberal media elite.

She has just completed making a documentary about young people and why it is that they don't vote (and attempting to encourage them to vote).

Fine.

"We made it totally non-partisan," she told Jon Stewart, "which was another one of those words I didn't know before we did this film. I was like (whispering) 'what is 'non-partisan?'"

I think it's lovely to suggest to young people, to anyone, really, that voting is a good thing and that it's in one's best self interest to do so but I really prefer that whoever is making the case has a better grasp of THE RUDIMENTARY GODDAMN VOCABULARY OF THEIR TOPIC.

Is it just me or is it totally idiotic to say "people should be involved in ________" and gallop off with a video camera before one has fully determined what exactly ______ might be. Voting, recycling, the plight of some refugees, really if you ask me to care about your topic I think that you should care enough yourself to be able to answer some F.A.Q. on the subject.

Pouting and saying "because it matters" is not a substitute.

Sorry to be so long away from the blogosphere.
From Wonkette, writing about the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks:

We don't want to belabor this too much, but on this, the third anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, we would like to call for a moratorium on all reminiscences that rely on what a fucking beautiful day it was. Yeah, it was a really nice day. And then a bad thing happened. You sort of have to be three years old to think that's ironic. Let's honor the victims by not dwelling on the weather.

Spent the weekend mostly on the sofa...super low-energy.

I don't have anything to blog. Just realized I haven't been here in almost 3 weeks.

Chicago's Mayor Daley basically takes no shit from anybody, at all, ever. And gives every indication that he does exactly as he pleases.

Weirdly, doing exactly as he pleases means declaring today to be Frankie Knuckles Day in Chicago. Frankie Knuckles moved to Chicago around 1977 and began DJing at the famed, gay, black disco The Warehouse on the West side of the loop. The street that runs next to the site of the former Warehouse has been declared to be Frankie Knuckles Way, earning it a little, brown sign that sits underneath the real sign.

It's hard to imagine what sort of political gain that could accrue to Daley...the gay, black, disco vote? Uh, no. He just did it.

Just as people the world over know Chicago as the birthplace of electrified blues, they know us as the birthplace of House. The Chicago record store Dusty Groove is always full of folks (okay Guys, it's a guy thing) of many nations, seeking the real deal, the house sounds.

I needed a note from my boss, I was going to leave all my stuff here at work, come back after tonight's DJ set in the south loop. I began to explain to my boss, an accountant, why I needed after hours access and launched into an explanation of what House music was.

"I know what House music is!" she said, startling me just as much as if she had said, "I like a little bondage, now and again."

It turns out back in the day, she worked for a small accounting firm which, in turn, did the books for The Warehouse.

"They need accounting too," she said, pleased at her unexpected role in a seminal point of a musical genre.

A friend and I went to see Frankie Knuckles spin. He had the final evening in Chicago's Summer Dance program, which I have blogged on and on about earlier so I won't bother again. Oh my goodness but that is a talented gentleman.

Knuckles, wearing a white cap (Knuckles still creases his bill, keeping it old school) with a "K N" in rhinestones in front rocked tonight's DJ set. He's almost as old as my dad which means one long-ass time lining up beats which I suppose explains why he didn't bother putting on any headphones to match beats until about 2 hours into his set.

The evening had it all-casual acquaintences hugging me as if we had survived mortar fire, queeny guys with enormous fans, a bouquet of helium balloons along with a friendly guy who explained that a dear friend of his had passed away after a 20-year battle with AIDS and that the balloons were here since the friend couldn't be and of course beats, beats, beats.

You know how there are some boring parts in most DJ sets? Tonight was not like that.

In this week's copy of The Onion there is a great interview with Steve Earle. A little bit off roots rockin' country Americana goes a long way with me and while I don't own any of his music, nor do I care to go see him in concert, he does give a hell of an interview. After admirably NOT complaining about the cheez-whiz Nashville music scene he gives this gem:

The real problem with Nashville doesn't have to do with the music business but living in a place with this many fucking Baptists. People come here from New York and LA expecting it to be a safer place to raise their kids. I guess they're under the impression that it's easier to protect their kids from Baptists than gang members. That's not necessarily true.

Indeed.

From the Birmingham, AL newspaper, regarding the suburb Leeds:

Leeds police forced a hairstylist who dressed up as Jesus and drenched himself in fake blood to come down off a 14-foot-tall cross he set up in front of his hair salon on Monday.

Patrick Conaty, owner of Running With Scissors hair and nail salon in downtown Leeds, got up on the cross about 2 p.m., his bald head fitted with a long black wig and his waist wrapped in a sheet splattered with red stains. He declared it "Salvation Awareness Day."

Workers from nearby businesses stepped outside to stare.

"I think he needs some clothes on," said Reda Wilson, who works at The Warehouse, a bargain store across the street. "I think he needs to get down."

Leeds police Officer Wendell Carter thought so too. He arrived at 2:30 p.m. and persuaded Conaty to come down off his cross, saying he needed a demonstration permit.

"We called City Hall for a crucifixion permit," Conaty yelled down with his arms outstretched on the eight-foot-wide crossbeam. He said a city official gave approval on the phone last week for his religious display, which included a sign in the hair salon window saying, "This is what Jesus did for you. What are you doing for Jesus?"

Police Chief Tony Hudson and City Manager Donnie Womble soon arrived on the scene. They noted that Conaty had blocked off parking spaces by tying a string from a tree to a potted plant to the back of a Ford pickup truck. "Blocking parking - not supposed to do that," Womble said.

"We ain't bustin' Jesus," Womble said. "We don't want to put Jesus in jail."

But city officials did make Conaty clean the fake blood stains off the new sidewalk, which Leeds had spent $381,000 to upgrade this year. Conaty, wearing a crown of thorns, poured bleach on the stains and used a push broom to clean them off. He said he got the blood from a party store.

as a completely off-topic observation...$381,000 for a sidewalk? Goodness.

Today, I turn my attention to the park district of Glenview, Illinois, just north and west of Chicago.

The park district has sponsored "Goldfish Day" on the last day of the swimming season each summer (this year that is August 15th according to Glenview) at their Roosevelt Pool.

Here's how it works-the park district releases hundreds of fish into the swimming pool. Children enter the pool and are permitted to keep all the fish they catch.

This year, a 12 year-old spoil sport named Kevin Pratt suggested that the district dump hundreds of plastic fish into the pool. Kids could then redeem the plastic fish for real fish.

Here's a Glenview community newsletter website from last year discussing the situation:

Each year, Glenview's park district hosts Goldfish Day – releasing hundreds of tiny fish into the chlorinated blue yonder of Roosevelt Pool and allowing local kids the thrill of catching and taking them home. Alas, resident Sharon Pratt discovered that sorrow can ensue. "We just finished burying our 16 goldfish caught by my kids at Roosevelt Pool," she wrote to the Glenview Announcements.

well, yeah. I guess swimming in chlorinated water and then being grabbed by excited children isn't the greatest thing for the fish.

Instead the park district is releasing the fish into 100-gallon tanks and letting the kids catch them there. The Tribune quotes Glenview Park District superintendent of leisure services, Bob Quill

"I think it is unfortunate," Quill said. "Certainly the event won't have the same flavor or excitement." adding, "I think there will be a lot of disappointed kids in Glenview."

In other evidence-that-the-Glenview-park-district-is-staffed-by-morons this community newspaper's site notes that the park had to cancel its "Goodbye To Roosevelt Pool" party due to poor ticket sales. The 65 year-old pool is being demolished at the end of the summer to make way for a new facility.

Diane Vragel, manager of marketing and communications at the park district, was unable to determine if the $75 ticket price accounted for paltry sales

The Trib is all about gross bodily fluids these days:

Gerry McGlothlin, 50, who voted for Keyes for president in 1996, said that although he was outside the banquet hall where Keyes made his announcement, Keyes stepped out to meet supporters, and McGlothlin said he wiped the sweat from Keyes' brow with a napkin so he would look better for TV news cameras.

Later Sunday, McGlothlin listed the napkin on eBay, saying he would donate any proceeds from the auction to the Keyes campaign. By late Monday, 68 people had bid on the napkin, and its price had risen from 8 cents to more than $242.

The Chicago Architecture Foundation conducts boat tours up and down the Chicago River, giving a unique perspective on our city's buildings.

From yesterday's CHICAGO TRIBUNE:


Witnesses said they had just begun the Chicago Architecture Foundation's 1 p.m. tour when they passed under the bridge and a cascade of a "brownish-yellow" substance rained on them. About two-thirds of the passengers seated on the upper deck of Chicago's Little Lady were soaked.

Passengers said they looked up to see at least one, possibly two charter buses rumbling above.
A volunteer tour guide at the boat's helm reassured passengers that they had been splashed with water. But the foul smell prompted suspicion.

There was "stunned silence initially. Then sort of this horrible realization as they began to smell themselves as to what happened," said Steedman Bass, 35, of Boston, who was a passenger on the boat but was not sprayed. "It was horrific."

Fortunately, one of the passengers was able to get the license plate of the bus. Turns out the bus belongs to The Dave Matthews Band.

What would you say?

The Chicago READER had a cover story this week on John Bingham who is known in running circles as "The Penguin". He lives in Chicago and has written the books No Need for Speed: A Beginner's Guide to the Joy of Running and Marathoning for Mortals. Apparently he conducts running groups which emphasize a slow pace, lots of walking (his own gait inspired the "Penguin" nickname)

Interestingly, I am a new convert to going slow with lots of walking. A friend of mine is training for a marathon and she runs 3 minutes, walks 2, runs 3, walks 2. She can go for 20 miles like this. So I tried it using my mp3 player...run a song, walk a song, run a song. And I can go for 60 minutes.

I'm down with the penguin approach, obviously, but what interested me about the article was the number of runners who are really angry about it. The gist of it is that the penguin and people like him are ruining running, marathons, the whole thing.

Which is weird for a few reasons...I mean, if someone wants to run a marathon in 4 hours, how the hell can you NOT praise them for continuing to do something for 4 hours, but secondly, aren't there still people finishing quickly? How does it ruin it for THEM? If there are people who are walking or crawling or whatever it doesn't slow down the winner, does it? Even if the overall average finishing time for marathons has gotten slower (as the article states) how is that bad for the speedy people? Hell, doesn't it make them seem even more speedy?

I was at a dinner party a few years ago and I got stuck across the table with a guy who was getting his PhD in something poetry related at the University of Chicago. I was struggling to come up with poetry-related conversation and at one point he mentioned that he hated that there are so many amateur poets out there.

I suggested that everyone should write poetry, they would probably benefit from the experience, but that I didn't necessarily want to read everyone's poetry. But hey, why shouldn't they write it? He wasn't buying my argument and we changed the subject. But really...if I write something lame about a sunset did I screw something up for Emily Dickinson?

Having lots of mediocre practitioners of something doesn't diminish the achievements of those who are skilled practitioners. It's interesting to think that something could be so fragile...running, poetry, that it could be ruined by people who merely enjoy rather than excel.

I have two thoughts about this...one is that I wonder if you have to feel somewhat marginalized in order to worry about the mediocre folks. Running and poetry are somewhat fringey as it is. Do baseball fans feel like intramural leagues (or worse softball) ruin baseball? It's doubtful.

The second thought is this whole notion that if I say I'm a marathoner because I run a course in two hours or whatever a "good" marathon time is, you say you're a marathoner even though you run it in four hours...does the word "marathoner" become less meaningful?

I don't think so. But clearly some people do. And, weirdly, I feel like I got a bit of insight into the anti-gay marriage opinion.

If a male couple or a female couple can call themselves "married" then what does that mean about a heterosexual couple's marriage?

I would argue "not a thing" but then again I think that people should be encouraged to write poetry and to run, even if they suck at it, because it might make them happy.

a post-Alex weekend lull here, feeling listless, my evening of voguing with my dance instructor Boogie not totally breaking through the malaise.

"I want to teach y'all this arm stuff," Boogie explained, "because those people on Wednesday who are doing this..."

Boogie proceeded to demonstrate some amazing what-most-folks-call "Moonwalking" and she calls "gliding"

"...which is so BORING," Boogie continued, after completing some very un-boring looking moves, "and I want all of y'all to have FIERCE arm moves!"

even fierce arm moves later, I am here, getting caught up on the papers. Rosa Parks has some issues related to her bogus-ass case against OutKast for their song "Rosa Parks". She claimed in her lawsuit that the song went against her trademark rights.

What exactly are those trademark rights, anyway? When, say, DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince made a song where the Fresh Prince himself bragged that he could beat Mike Tyson, did this eat into the pay-per-view? What is Rosa Parks selling that this song would fuck her over, exactly?

Anyway, her doctor has said that she is medically unfit to testify in her own defense and the judge had demanded that the doctor get a little more specific. Well Good.

there is a tipping point when it comes to liberal thought, a point where the mind moves from "this is the noble choice" to "this is the self interested choice which, coincidentally, serves liberal ends."

I saw Stanley Crouch read about 10 years ago and he was talking about the OJ trial (yeah, ten years ago) and part of his point was that, say what you like about the sorry state of race relations in the U.S., but it's something that the best available defense attorney is a black man. 

Not the best available black attorney, but the best available attorney, period, happens to be a black man.  And there's something undeniably progressive about that.  The progress isn't over but to say that there is no progress?  Well that's just crazy.

I felt that way watching Barak Obama give the Democratic keynote address tonight.  To think that Illinois, a state dominated by Chicago (not known for its progressive racial politics) and filled out with rural, farming communities (again) that we have a senatorial candidate like Obama who is, at this point, running unopposed and who does not just give me a smug "ooooh aren't I progressive voting for a black guy!" warm feeling  but is actually an ass-kicking, the-best-qualified, hell-of-a-speaker candidate who I get to vote for. 

It's a hell of a long way from Carol fucking Mosley Braun.

***
I have a co-worker who is a Republican but otherwise we like one another.  I was teasing her today about the convention, asking if she was the one I saw dressed in a giant rubber flip-flop standing behind Chris Matthews, etc.   Anyway, she asked if I had seen the Clintons' embrace (it wasn't even an air kiss, more like a neck touch with chins pointed as far away as possible).

She takes some kind of confirmation from that non-kiss in the same way I take confirmation from Barak Obama.  That Hillary is in a loveless marriage and that there is something deeply cynical about staying with your openly philandering husband simply because it advances your own agenda.

And I feel all over the place on that.  I can't imagine having the entire world weigh in on Your Husband and What He's Been Up To.  On the other hand, if your husband did, in fact, jizz all over some dress from The Gap and had to fess up...well why NOT turn that into a career for yourself.  Clearly they spend no time with one another whatsoever and I don't doubt for one minute that he is getting international booty left and right out on his speaking tours, book tours, fundraising tours, etc...I mean this is the first ex-president who could command a full-on groupie brigade.  I imagine all the pilates-ed forty-somethings who would LOVE to show him around (insert name of community here) while he's in town.

I dunno if Hillary is getting any action (although I do rather hope she has a squad of interns, ivy league, fit, and having signed non-disclosure agreements ready to service her every need) but it's hard for me to blame her for capitalizing on His presidency.  I mean, my god, Sonny Bono's wife took over his seat in Congress, we aren't supposed to cut Hillary any slack?????  TELL ME she isn't qualified for elective office?  She was AS qualified, if not MORE qualified than her husband so she decides she wants to run?  And win?  Well bully for her.

At the end of the day, I'm happier with my opinions than I think I would be with my co-workers.  I get bitter, of course I do.  But my hope, oh my hope.  It fucking glows sometimes.

According to today's Boston Globe, Madeline Albright, Senator Joe Biden and Andre 3000 of OUTKAST visited the JFK Library yesterday.  Hey Ya.

 at work now...sleepy and not feeling productive.  So I've started looking up info about the Democratic Convention.  The Boston Globe has a cool, interactive map that will tell you who the delegates are for any state.

Strangely, one of the delegates from Illinois is Blue Note recording artist Kurt Elling.

 

There is so much about being a soldier that seems demanding and horrible...I think it's really quite a lot to expect soldiers to also eat meals that have been re-hydrated with urine.

My brother turns 30 today.  Happy Birthday Josh!

I recently bought a 3-disc compilation of House music.

In 1979, Chicago was infamous for hosting a "Disco Sucks!" rally in the middle of a White Sox doubleheader. The fans grew so excited over burning of disco records that they rioted, rushed the field, and the second game had to be cancelled.

A few years later disco was mutating into House and, as the liner notes suggest, there was "House Nation" everybody was as one, etc. etc. The usual dance cliches (Tear Down The Walls! Feel The Love Within The Bass!)

so anyway (it's early a.m., ya gotta give me a pass with my transitions between paragraphs) the City of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs hosts a program called Chicago SummerDance. Thursday through Sunday there is a dance lesson of some sort of dance (Salsa, Tango, Swing, etc.) and then a few hours with a live band. This year they've added DJ sets on Wednesdays-no dance lessons. I went with some friends from my hip hop class last night.

First of all, in the middle of the week, 6:30-9:30 p.m. is an ideal time to go dancing.

Second of all, because it's free and in the middle of a park, there is a truly diverse crowd. Not just racially (although it was) and socially (it was) but there were old people there, kids, homeless people and at least two women in floral print suits who shouted "We're in town for a convention!" at us, all shaking it on the portable dance floor.

If you attended raves in the early 90's, you're old enough to have kids now and indeed lots of former ravers were there with kids who were having a hell of a time blowing bubbles, playing with glow sticks, etc.

Nice to have something put on by the city that's totally free and totally works. I'll be back.

Well I'm somewhat done with my summer school class (no more assignments, just re-writes which aren't on deadline through the month of July) and I cautiously re-enter the blogosphere.

John Edwards-charming fellow. But is he as charming as the current vice president? From The International Herald Tribune:

By the second rally of his weekend campaign swing, Vice President Dick Cheney seemed to be getting the hang of it, delivering an entire line of his standard stump speech looking at the audience instead of the podium as he usually does.

Then the audience got a little too excited. Their cheers forced him to read the same line twice. The vice president is a man who likes to get on with things.

"You guys want to hear this speech or not?" he asked, not quite kidding.

This weeks issue of THE NEW YORKER has a story about The Lusty Lady, a peep show in San Francisco. My brother was briefly the manager there a few years ago. The article is about how the strippers bought out management and are now running the peep-show as a co-operative venture (they borrowed the set up of a local Natural Foods co-op for part of their operating structure).

The article goes on to confirm what I've always thought which is that collective groups are a gigantic pain in the ass. In theory, I would like for everyone's voice to be heard. But in practice, I'm not that interesting in doing the hearing (such a passive construction "Let every voice be heard" rather than "let me hear every voice"...no, it's somebody else who should be doing the listening whenever the talk turns to letting voices be heard).

Strangely, one employee of the club, a guy who works at the front desk (a job my brother held at the Lusty in Seattle for many years) named Aesop bemoans the fact that so many of the co-op's meetings discuss vaginas. Well duh.

Alex has begun blogging and I'm awfully thankful.

In his 2nd post he points out that it takes some work to find out who the candidates/parties are and what they stand for.

I think to myself that I'm interested in politics but actually what I'm interested in is more like vulgar name calling. Democracy, in and of itself, isn't that exciting to me. Finger pointing, catchy slogans, stuff like that-that's what I enjoy. I don't care about baseball but Chicago's subway series is going on right now with the White Sox playing the loathed Cubs...I know all the reasons for liking/hating both teams even though I couldn't possibly care less about actually attending a game.

Canada has more than just two parties which sounds like nirvana to lots of U.S. voters. It might make for a better government (Canada seems to be more on the ball than the U.S. in so many ways...a government that serves the people, for instance) but it makes it harder to cast the parties as heroes and villians, the part that I like.

I was supposed to see Prince last night but the Purple Pain is feigning illness and the show has been re-scheduled. Re-scheduled to Thursday, July 22nd and I thought to myself "uh oh...isn't that the last evening of the Democratic Convention???" Yes, I actually gave some considerable thought to whether or not I should stay home and watch hours of television which would contain not one single surprise vs. going to see Prince.

I'm going to see Prince. Although I may have to get Tivo before then...

Apparently Dick Cheney got into an argument on Tuesday with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee (I'm reading this in the Washington Post today)

Per. the WaPo, Leahy brought up the subject of Haliburton. Here's how the paper describes the event:

The exchange ended when Cheney offered some crass advice.

"Fuck yourself," said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency.

I'm intrigued that Cheney did that...after all being a politician seems to be all about smiling in public when your opponents bait you. But I'm more intrigued that the Washington Post just printed "fuck", even in the context of a quote. No asterisks, no "(expletive)", no nothing.

As the article goes on to explain, the exchange took place on the same day the Senate passed legislation described as the "Defense of Decency Act" by 99 to 1.

To my complete surprise, I am actually excited about seeing a Michael Moore movie. David Edelstein, writing in Slate, sums it up perfectly:

Along with many other polite liberals, I cringed last year when Moore launched into his charmless, pugilistic acceptance speech at the Academy Awards. Oh, how vulgar, I thought—couldn't he at least have been funny? A year later, I think I might have been too hard on the fat prick. Six months before her death in 1965, the great novelist Dawn Powell wrestled in her diary with the unseemliness of political speech during an "artistic" event: "Lewis Mumford gave jolt to the occasion and I realized I had gotten as chicken as the rest of America because what he said—we had no more right in Vietnam than Russia had in Cuba—was true but I did not think he should use his position to declaim this. Later I saw the only way to accomplish anything is by 'abusing' your power." Exactly.

So how has Kerry fared this week when the news was all Reagan all the time...the pundits have wondered whether or not all the pro-Reagan hoo-ha would favor Bush ("see how like Reagan he is?") or go against him ("I knew President Reagan and you are no Reagan").

Naturally, nobody is going to compare Kerry to Reagan. So what are they going to use for a basis of comparison? Here's the NYT:

Like a caged hamster, Senator Kerry is restless on the road.

Uh oh.

And from elsewhere in the article:

(he)starts his speeches with throat-clearing thank-you's that last 5, 8, even 10 or 12 minutes, and he often runs on for several paragraphs or pages after summing up with a promised, "finally."

You mean the LOW END of that is five minutes? Turn on the radio, listen to your average pop song. Okay, pretend that instead of, say, Ludacris talking about something fun or interesting, you have John Kerry recognizing the achievements of a local congressman. A song is what, 3 and 1/2 minutes? Four? And Kerry goes five? When he's keeping it short?

I remember watching candidate Bob Dole in '96 on CSPAN. He was at a state fair somewhere in the midwest, I can't remember which state exactly but my point is that if a midwestern state fair isn't Dole Country, no place is. And there was a cluster of older men, standing in a small cluster near where Dole was giving his stump speech. And the men were just chatting with one another, about their crops and stuff. Literally ALL they would have had to do was pivot slightly and stop talking and they could have taken in Dole's whole speech. But it didn't seem worth the hassle to them.

Bush's approval numbers are down, of course, but Kerry's aren't rising. The people who like Bush really, really like him. And the people who like Kerry...really hate Bush.

The anti-Clinton people assumed it was self-evident why Clinton shouldn't be re-elected. Hell during the Democratic convention, a high-level Clinton strategist was found to be telling all to a high-end D.C. prostitute. And while plenty of people disliked Clinton, not enough liked Dole.

And can I just say that I am beyond freaked out about the labor situation in Boston for the upcoming convention?

Let me explain.

Boston is in dispute with police over overtime rules and they are picketing the convention center where the convention is going to be held. The Democrats are, of course, the party of unions. So it is totally not okay to have union members of ANY sort (much less unionized cops) protesting your pep rally. Because there are going to be a bazillion journalists there, bored and looking for stories and a bunch of protesters with grievances is a story.

It gets worse, of course. Kerry is from Mass, Boston is in Mass, how difficult a concept is it to say "He can't manage a convention in his hometown; how can you argue that he should be running the country? How can you argue that Iraq would go more smoothly?"

Come on Boston! Get it together!

From Today's LA TIMES

Teenage Saudi boys are so hungry for contact with girls that they are engaging in an unusual mating ritual: They scrawl their names and telephone numbers on slips of paper, crumple them into balls and hurl them at passing girls in shopping centers when the religious police aren't looking.

Bless their hearts!

The trains in Chicago have been carrying this advertisement:

We can train you to run a marathon!

I mostly ignore the ads on the trains but for some reason this one was really attracting my attention. Then I had a phone catch-up with my friend Lillian and she mentioned that she thought she might train for a marathon.

so the whole thing had a sort of "The hand of God" vibe

Anyway I mentioned this casually to a few people, often while smoking cigarettes, who agreed that it sounded like a fine idea.

While perusing Lillian's blog I realized that she had actually gone and started the damn training (and therefore was unlikely to be interested in comparing Can't Get Started notes over a Camel Light) and she had links to her training regimen which she found online.

I went to that site and found not only a marathon training regimen but also a beginning runner's training regimen.

There is a part of me, a fairly vocal part of me, actually, that feels adamantly that I am NOT a beginner! Think of all that running I did when I lived in Georgia!!!

I moved away from Georgia, however, in 1989 and while no stranger to activity in general, running? It's been a loooooong ass time.

I should point out that I started riding my bike to work a few days/week in May while the weather was still iffy and now that the weather has moved from iffy to downright hot and humid, I hope to keep that at 5 days/week. I did this in 99 and it was great but then, of course, summer ended, so did the bike riding and I gained a lot of weight. So the theory here is that I begin running now, by the time October rolls around I'm in a running frame of mind and I can continue that even in the ice/snow/whatever.

Let me tell you, running in some ice/snow/whatever sounds pretty good right now.

The way I'm interpreting the 30 day beginner plan (notice that I don't link to it because I don't care to be contradicted on this) is that you run 30 minutes/day for 30 days and really the point is to just get out there and move for 30 minutes. If you walk 28 minutes and run two of them, well so be it, you have 30 days to build up your stamina.

Did I mention that I rode my bike to work today (18 miles round trip!)?

I've decided, here on day 2 of this endeavor, that I might as well go as soon as I get home since I'm already sweaty and gross and it isn't as though I will become more inclined to go for a jog after I'm showered and fed.

Timberlands OFF adidas ON out the door.

I didn't actually track how much of the time was spent jogging, how much walking. I'd be happy if it was half and half. But I have 30 days. Here's two observations from my 30 minutes in my 'hood.

1)If you are a woman, standing at a bus stop with a man, repeatedly shrieking "These are my glasses!" does not seem to be an argument-winner.
2)If you are a student at the Yeshiva you can play basketball in the hot, evening sun but you still have to wear a white shirt, black trousers, and a velvet yarmulke so really there are, in fact, worse ways of exercising than the one I was engaged in.

The Associated Press about Reagan:

...(is survived by his)wife, Nancy, whom he called Mommy

eww

I'm sure I'll have more to say about Reagan but right now I want to write down a conversation I had yesterday with my dance teacher. She told me about a boyfriend of hers who had bad grooming. "Drew, you wanna know how bad he was? He would trim his toenails by kicking a doorframe and breaking them off, that's how bad he was."

eww as well

one thing that I know is that journalists need a "beat". You write about education or the courts or religion or whatever. I'm all into Benoit Denizet-Lewis from the NYTimes...he has the Sex Beat.

I first read him last year when he talked about the DL (Down Low) culture of black men who have sex with other men but do not consider themselves gay. Now he is writing about teenagers and the culture of hookups and friends with benefits.

it's a great article (you can read it here if you're registered with the NYTimes, and hey, you should be) and what interests me is the idea of a Market Economy at work in the realm of sex.

Conventional wisdom holds that since male-to-male sex involves two individuals who are socialized to say "yes" then you get elements like bathhouses, backrooms, etc. Because there is an advantage to providing a place where men can dispense with formalities (like, you know, finding out the other person's name) and getting down to business.

One argument that is commonly made on behalf of this behavior is that this is not gay male culture, this is simply MALE culture and that if straight men could make a similar arrangement, they would.

What this Denizet-Lewis article suggests is that just such a heterosexual experiment is underway, right now, facilitated by cell phones and the internet. Dating and relationships are messy, difficult, frustrating, unnecessary. Hookups are better, "friends with benefits" is better. In other words, contemporary teenagers are acting like gay men. Interestingly the hot issue with gay men these days is not the right to sleep with whomever they please, without the burdens of social conventions, but rather the right to marry (which follows hot on the heels of the right for gays to engage in parenting) and, as the article points out, gay teens who go online are quick to point out that they are NOT interested in hookups but only in relationships.

The information about hooking up is about what you might expect (the boys mostly dig it, the girls mostly feel a little used, everyone is quick to claim that they have no emotional feelings about it at all) but Denizet-Lewis does a nice historical survey of dating mores.

In the 1930's, teenagers were supposed to be (socially) promiscuous meaning that they did NOT go steady with one another and that a loser was a girl at a dance who danced with the same boy all night. You were supposed to get around, have a broad spectrum. Then all of the sudden it's WWII and they start scaring girls, telling them, essentially, "look to your left, look to your right ONE OF YOU WILL NEVER BE MARRIED" and the pendulum swung THAT way.

The difference, of course, is that in the 1930's mixed-gender groups could hang out but if one lad wanted to get a blow job from one of the girls, well, first of all he might have to give a tutorial on the topic but secondly he didn't have this entire back channel of communications to facilitate the endeavor. A 1930's teen did not post pics of himself to solicit feedback on whether or not he was hot or not.

I can't imagine how much worse my teenage years would have been if, on top of everything else, I felt a pressure to post pics of myself online and allow complete strangers to assess my naked torso. Ugh.

Finished with school, finished with a crazy work deadline, back to my life.

From an article in today's NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE about Christopher Walken:

His bizarro word rhythm and gleeful disregard for punctuation makes even his most banal utterances sound dramatic. At the grocery store, he stared at a plump tomato and then put it back. ''I DON'T. Buy the tomatoes with. The stems. On them. They don't. Degrade. They go. Down the sink. And into the WATER. Then. They get lodged in the throats of little. OTTERS.''

It's been a long time since I've indulged in the guilty, guilty pleasure of listening to LOVELINE with Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew but I have it on now as I wait for my frozen Trader Joes taquitos to heat up in the oven.

Nelly Furtado is the guest and a caller asked her how she felt about being embraced by the hip hop community.

She explained that she grew up in Victoria, B.C., and, that while it was a very white town, they DID pick up radio stations from Seattle.

Okay, I was in Seattle from 90 through about half of 96 and I'm here to say, if Seattle radio was the alternative-to-whiteness, the hip-hop center that she was working with...well bless her heart.

I'm listening to the latest round of hearings in D.C.

It's a little bit disconcerting to hear people talking about "JAG Officers".

You can imagine what this makes me think of every single time.

What up cuz?
What up dogster?

(making my way through the morning papers here...)

John Tierney, writing in NYT:

How, (some conservatives having 2nd thoughts about Iraq) wonder, did so many conservatives, who normally don't trust their government to run a public school down the street, come to believe that federal bureaucrats could transform an entire nation in the alien culture of the Middle East?

From a NYTimes article headlined "Christian Cool and the New Generation Gap"

The actor Stephen Baldwin, a born-again Christian, has just
directed a DVD called "Livin' It," pairing extreme sports
with faith testimony, from which he hopes to spin skate
Bibles, clothing, CD's and Bible-study guides, all tied to
a nonprofit youth ministry.

"This could be the first get-down rock 'n' roll, cool
Christian brand," he said. "I've been to conferences with
youth pastors, and they all said, 'Dude, we've been waiting
for something that's cool and edgy and Christian.' ''

I hardly know where to begin.

Checked out this particular Baldwin's filmography at this fan site and considering that he's been in LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN, HALF-BAKED, THREESOME and THE USUAL SUSPECTS I'm not sure whether Mr. Baldwin is especially alt. in his Christianity or just in need of a job.

Here's the site for the Livin' It dvd which annoyingly has lots of words in blue that aren't hypertext links, they're just in a blue font. But the force behind the dvd (other than He Himself, presumably) is Luis Palau and the Luis Palau evangelical organization who has a homepage here. It looks like an ordinary, evangelical organization except for all the pictures of skateboarders across the top of the page. Luis just got back from China where they were psyched to hear about Christ, same thing is true for India, click here for a sermon, etc. A link takes you to "Ministries" and, from there, "Skate Ministry" which notes:

To reach the “core sports” (skateboarding, BMX, etc.) subculture that so influences today’s young people, LPEA builds a 9,000-square-foot skate park for each of our evangelistic festivals.

At LPEA skate parks, professional skateboarders demonstrate their skills and a skate evangelist gives a hard-hitting Gospel presentations each day.

Chicago Firefighters have been getting a lot of bad press lately.

They maintain a chat room and b.board to discuss issues that are of interest to them.

Earlier this year one topic of interest was the best way to disguise racial slurs when chatting on departmental radios.

Now they are discussing the Fire Department's director of media and public affairs, Molly Sullivan

From today's CHICAGO SUN TIMES:

Director of media and public affairs Molly Sullivan was referred to as a "big-chested babe" and a "hotty" in anonymous postings denounced as offensive by both Sullivan and City Hall.

''Does any of you chiefs have any naked pix of her? I think she should go work at the strip club. Man, I'd be there every day," one posting said.

On Thursday, 22-year veteran fire engineer Richard Anderson removed the postings from the Web site he operates because ''I figured, maybe, it's offensive to women.''

But he inadvertently compounded the insult by saying Sullivan should have been flattered. ''Somebody thinks she's beautiful. Isn't that a compliment? She's got a nice-looking body. She's a hotty. That means someone thinks she's attractive. Don't you think so?''

Calling the sexist postings much ado about nothing, Anderson said, ''What, is there no news in town? Can't you get nothing on the mayor?''

Okay, this is kind of silly but since I can't do anything about the big issues, here's a small issue.

Rumsfeld has been quoted saying that he isn't going to address "The torture word"

Shouldn't it be "the T word"?

This is a little like saying "we won't be using the fuck word on the airwaves"

In 13 hours or so I'm having lunch with my boss, whom I adore. She thinks it's a late "Happy Administrative Professionals Day" lunch. But it's the lunch when I tell her that I've signed up for daytime classes this fall semester. I'm hopeful that I can work for her part time, maybe even get a raise out of the deal. But I'm scared, scared, scared with all this money talk.

My brother asked me some questions about the commuter newspapers that made their debut in Chicago last year and I've been looking online for stories to back up my own observations. I looked in the Columbia Journalism Review and came across a great story about Adrian Nicole LeBlanc who wrote RANDOM FAMILY. Her family was working class, one reason she connected so closely with the subjects of her book. She took a long time to write the book. How long? Well she got a $20,000 advance on the book:

From the time LeBlanc received her book contract from Houghton Mifflin and paid her agent to the time the book was delivered to Scribner, the money from her advance broke down to $36 a week.

Note to self: Be Brave.

Scrolling through THE COMPLETE BUSHISMS on Slate. Here's one from back in the day:

"The students at Yale came from all different backgrounds and all parts of the country. Within months, I knew many of them."—From A Charge To Keep, by George W. Bush, published November 1999

Hello all y'all.

It's Saturday evening, close to 9 p.m. and I'm listening to Dave Frischberg on the local public radio station. I went for a long-ass bike ride today, part of that was I stopped by Stanley's on my way heading back home.

The logo of Stanley's Fresh Produce is an old Tony Soprano-looking guy smoking a pipe and flying an airplane fashioned out of a watermelon. They are on Elston Avenue...to put this in perspective, Morton Salt is on Elston avenue as is The Blommer Chocolate Factory. Head up a bit, to the intersection of Elston, Fullerton and Damen and there is the Vienna Sausage (i.e. Hot Dog) factory with its, god help us, factory outlet store.

Chicago, hog butcher and general factory type hoo ha to the world is in evidence, even today, along Elston Avenue.

Let me tell you, when it's May and sunny at 5:45 p.m. and you can roll past on your bike past the intersection of Milwaukee, Des Plaines and Kinzie where it smells like a big pan of brownies because that's where the Bronner Chocolate factory is...mmm mmm I would never trade Chicago for anything.

Anyway Elston has all sorts of industrial stuff not to mention lots of quasi industrial stuff (i.e. "Black Tie Hors Douvres!")

so can I just say here, that I know that "Hors Douvres" isn't quite right. Spelling, I mean

I've plugged it into Merriam Webster and my alternatives are:

Horsepowers
Horsehairs
Horseradish
Horsewhippers (horsewhippers???)
Whoremasters (that's what I'm talking about)

but nobody is suggesting the word for "appetizers"

anyway, black tie "appetizers" are available along Elston Avenue along with the only Target within Chicago's city limits.

I have heaps of organic produce, a whole messenger bag-full for $20. Stanley's is down the road from Whole Foods which is commonly called "Whole Paycheck" and Stanley's boasts of their low prices.

For a while a few years ago I tried getting a bag of organic produce from a local market...you would pay a flat fee (I think it was $20) per week and you got a big bag full of whatever was in season. It was like buying a subscription to a bunch of produce...it forced me to think outside my normal routine and eat different stuff. But it meant a two-hour round trip to the store 1x a week and I had a lot of food that began to mold by Wednesday (okay, I appreciate that there aren't any preservatives but damn, you are telling me that I pick up a bag on Saturday and I have to eat ALL that by Tuesday? Uh uh.)

So now I have organic apples (two kinds) organic pears (bartlett) organic asparagus, collards and both cherry and grape tomatoes. Which is not to shabby, I think.

I'm cooking brown rice now which I will then spread out on a parchment-ed baking sheet to cool and then freeze in individual baggies. And baking (baking!) beans in a covered casserole. Chickpeas that I can baggie-up and keep in my freezer. Next is baked oatmeal so that I can eat wedges of baked oatmeal, topped with apple sauce from Trader Joe's.

How wanky is it to talk about my food on my blog? Well it could be worse. I could be talking about my hip-hop class on Fridays.

Such a good bike ride. Got a phone call from Alex...that's a good thing about Cell Phones; why NOT take a phone call in the south loop and chat for a bit there on Canal Street, across from the Northern Trust headquarters. The Post Office is nearby, the one mentioned in radio traffic reports i.e. "40 minutes on the southbound to the post office" and indeed it takes up an impressive amount of real estate.

How in the world did the post office work before zip codes? Zip codes are recent, under 40 years old (and Amen to whatever unsung person came up with naming them "Zip" rather than "priority" or whatever. But before Zip codes...were there special lifers who could sit in front of mail bins and sort all of California, say? All the Santas, all the Santa Barbaras separate from all the Santa Claras. I know that at one time trains full of cargo would cross the country and sorters would ride the rails, tossing mail into specialized canvas sacks for eventual delivery. Just think of California, what it must have meant for the Post Office to have specialized in those who knew all the "Santa"s apart from on another.

It's tough for me to remember the world before bar-codes. I sure as hell can't imagine a world before zip codes.

Sorry to be so Hall Of Mirrors about all of this but Wonkette has an excerpt from the Whitehouse Interactive site
The Whitehouse has a "letter to the White House"

Q: Tom from Camano Island, WA:
How could this Country who is supposed to represent all that is right in the World allow the treatment of prisoners to happen as reported in our newspapers today? Swift and sure action must be taken to correct this situation (if true).

A: Dr. Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor:
. . . Those pictures were awful because America -- American men and women in uniform, active and reserve, are serving in Iraq at great sacrifice. People are losing their lives. We came there to help to liberate the people of Iraq. We came there to build schools, and to build clinics, and we want very much that the images of Americans should be the images of helping the Iraqi people.

and now Wonkette weighing in

You hear that? Someone screwed up and released the wrong images. It's like during the civil rights movement. The protesters kept emphasizing the lynchings and the angry mobs; they never showed photos of the terrific restrooms and water fountains the white folks so thoughtfully provided. You can see how people got the wrong idea.

My brother wants to know why Bush didn't apologize to anyone on Arabic language TV.

From today's Chicago Tribune:
"I believe that the politics of contrition is for losers," said Scott Reed, a Republican consultant who was the campaign manager for Bob Dole in 1996. "The American people look to their commander in chief to be optimistic, forward-looking and strong, and Bush is not going to get caught in this trap. Nobody in the world thinks the commander in chief of the United States is in charge of managing a specific prison in Iraq."

This may or may not be true about Americans/their commander in chief/etc. but it does overlook the key fact that it might be also nice to influence other people elsewhere in the world as well. Bush is quick to claim that others Hate Our Freedom when it is no doubt more accurate to say that They Hate Our Smug Arrogance and Self Centeredness.

Fred Kaplan writing in SLATE:

It seems the president is allergic not just to the words but to the concept of responsibility that underlies them. To apologize would be to admit he'd made a mistake. And mistakes are forbidden in the Bush White House.

His resistance is particularly unfortunate here. An Iraqi who watched the two American generals apologize, and then watched the American president fail to, would certainly notice the difference—and might, understandably, wonder about the officers' significance and sincerity.

It is not just the press that's hung up on the S word. It has been claimed that Arabs like to hear it from those who have done wrong, but my guess is this would be true of any people who had been senselessly humiliated by the world's superpower

Too often, the president began a sentence with the words, "People in Iraq must understand ..." or "The Iraqi people must understand …" or "People in the Middle East must understand … ." He probably didn't mean it but, to an Iraqi audience, these phrases may seem insistent, overbearing, even autocratic, coming from the man who is currently occupying their country.

This is public relations 101, no? There are multiple audiences. An oil company might need to assure stockholders that they are searching for oil in new areas while simultaneously assuring others that they have high environmental concerns.

I'm sure that, as Kaplan suggests, U.S. voters (the red state folks, anyway) will find it re-assuring that Bush went on Arabic language news and spoke some platitudes and that's fine but incredibly insufficient. Couldn't there be a way to accomplish BOTH goals...appease the people who we claim will be a soverign government any minute AND toss a bone to those here at home? Well sure but there has to be a willingness to believe that such a thing is necessary or desirable and so far that doesn't seem to be the case.

Corporations know that bad PR is bad for the bottom line. The Bush White House has asked for another $25 Billion for Iraq just to tide us over until the next fiscal year begins.

I'll just give you the first and last paragraphs of this article.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is trying to stop two Ohio brothers from making and selling bobblehead dolls in his likeness.

and then

The brothers market other dolls, too. Their best seller is model Anna Nicole Smith, followed by Jesus.

Who cares about brown people and democracies anyway; let's talk about flavored tobacco!

William Grimes writing in The New York Times about the new Kool "Smooth Fusions" flavored cigarettes-Mintrigue, Mocha Taboo, Caribbean Chill and Midnight Berry:

Midnight Berry, which really did smell like berries when I tentatively sniffed the unlighted tobacco, seemed murky. It was sweet, but not in a specific way. I wanted fruit salad in a satisfying smokable format. What I seemed to be getting was a cab's air freshener set on fire.

From this morning's Washington Post:

President Bush said yesterday that people who have skin that is "a different color than white" are capable of self-government.

"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern," Bush said.

"I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern."

Interesting to me for two reasons...first of all who exactly is he talking about? As the article goes on to say, neither Bush nor his press secretary Scott McClellan would ever say who Bush is rebutting here.

But the second point is that it's difficult to use an example of bigotry and then set yourself up as the opposite. In my Public Relations class, a student was very upset with the last press conference. "He was talking about brown people, who is he to talk about brown people?!?" asked the student. The phrase was included in the speech to defuse charges of bigotry (some unnamed others might not think brown people are good but I think they're awesome) but what came across to my classmate was some white guy smirking about brown people.

Sometimes my brother makes me laugh so hard I forget very simple things like how to properly swallow a drink of water. Then I cough and hack and alarm my co-workers. It's still worth it, though.

I went to get my lunch out of the fridge and there is a paper bag, next to my lunch with "Andrew" written on it in a happy, girly script. I checked it out...not only are there no other Andrews on this floor, there are no other Andrews in the entire company.

"Are you expecting an organ transplant?" asked Marcia, pretty funny for her.

USA Today has a story (I read about it in Slate) saying that 75% of Iraqis think the occupation sucks, the U.S. should leave, etc.

I'm not particularly interested in the poll's results but I am fascinated that someone ("someone" was the Pan Arab Research Center of Dubai) polled. A sidebar explains the methodology:

Interviews were conducted between March 22 and April 2, with the exception of the governate of Sulaymaniya where interviews ran through April 9. All interviews were conducted in person in the respondent’s home, with an average interview length of 70 minutes. The cooperation rate — the percentage of those contacted who agreed to be interviewed — was 98%.

So are polls really this widespread? Were there teams going door to door in Rwanda asking "on a scale of one to five with one being "very little" and five being "extremely so" were you distressed when you learned that citizens were encouraged to hack up their neighbors with machettes?" Seventy-one percent of the residents of the former Yugoslavia reporting that Milosevic was leading the country "in the wrong direction"?