An email from amazon.com to me:

...you might like to know that Dispossessed: Life in Our World's Urban Slums will be released in paperback soon.

Woo hoo!

Some random things from the news:

Sean Paul talks with Jim DeRogatis of the Sun-Times about his progressive attitudes towards women:

Just the other day, I was in Chicago seeing a lady walking to work, and she had a baby on her arm and work stuff in the other hand. You do not see many men doing that. So if I tell a woman, 'Shake that thing / I find you sexy to me,' I hope that's inspiring her to feel, 'Yeah, I work hard all the time, and I've gotta take care of the kids, but someone sees that I'm hot,' and that makes her feel good about herself."

Suzanne C. Ryan of the Boston Globe chats with Mike Wallace:

Q. President George W. Bush has declined to be interviewed by you. What would you ask him if you had the chance?

A. What in the world prepared you to be the commander in chief of the largest superpower in the world? In your background, Mr. President, you apparently were incurious. You didn't want to travel. You knew very little about the military ... The governor of Texas doesn't have the kind of power that some governors have ... Why do you think they nominated you? ... Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that the country is so [expletive] up?

And a man in Miami Beach has lynched Santa Claus (it's worth looking at the pictures):

"It's just wrong, I mean who would want their children to see this, and it reminds adults of lynching," neighbor Estelle Farnsworth said. "It's just nasty, there is no spirit of Christmas in this."

The Santa also has his hands and legs bound by some type of wire.

"Now the kids are sad with that, you know, because they say it's not fair with Santa," neighbor Tanira Giacian said. "Santa should be around bringing their gifts, looking for the gifts, and not hanging on a tree. They're just kind of scared of that."

I'm working on a story for class about how the pension system for the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority-responsible for the el and buses) is underfunded. This is every bit as exciting as it sounds.

Anyway, while digging through Google, I came across this gem about Carole Brown, Chairman of the CTA. This comes from the time when she was profiled by Crain's Chicago Business as one of the "40 Under 40." Brown had only recently been appointed as Chair.

It took her only a few weeks on the job to recognize the CTA's importance to area residents. "A lot of us just know it is there, but we don't think about how many people rely on it or the impact it has on people's lives," she says.

I mean, who knew that people rely on mass transit? Presumably candidates to chair a gigantic mass transit system might have given the matter a thought or two.

I bought a painting today. Isn't that weird?

I stood in the store a few weeks ago pondering buying a pair of sneakers, shoes that I knew I wanted, could afford, and were on sale for a good price. I am not an impulsive shopper.

So if I dithered around about spending $45 on sneakers, classic Adidas Sambas, I'm kind of amazed that I bought this painting (which cost more than the sneakers, less than a month's rent. I wouldn't be so cagey but it was quite affordable and I think the artist is great and I want him to sell a ton of work and get paid big-time and somehow I feel like actually putting the price here on the internet would set a weird cyberspace price celing into motion so why not be safe?)

There was an arts and crafts show at Hull House today. They threw open their doors to artists and craftspeople this weekend to set up tables and show their work.

It was all fine, nothing I really cared for but only one dreadful table with plastic doll faces sewn onto mammoth crochet-dresses. I went because I was hanging out with my friend Barry and his boyfriend, Mitch, who heard about the show and had somehow imagined that he was going to discover a little-old-lady knitter who made amazing gray hats. My fantasy life has never included discovering amazing homemade hats but it takes all kinds.

So I looked around and then, tucked into a hallway, were these paintings. I almost hate giving the link here because seeing the paintings on the internet isn't quite the same. Of course it isn't, otherwise we'd all just dial into the Louvre or whatever. I looked at them and then we walked down the corridor to see the other folks stuck in the weird, side space, and then back to Harry's stuff. And looked and looked. He had a little booklet with color copies of other recent work and I connected with this work. There was one smaller painting I liked very much. Isn't that cool? I really thought about that one but I kept returning to this one. Actually, mine is slightly different; same guys but the writing is different. Tiny, penciled words that surround the figures. I really wish it came across better online. I wish that looking at that image on your computer screen could make you feel the way that I feel when I look at the painting. I was going to type the words that surround the figures but that isn't likely to make things any better so you are going to have to take my word or just come over and look at it.

I didn't mention the part about him being from Tennessee. I had the feeling that he was the only artist there who isn't from Chicago. He said that he hoped to learn more about the Chicago art scene by participating in this show.

"I have a crush on your paintings," I said.

Somehow, they made me feel like Tennessee. They made me feel like the very best parts of living in Nashville, the music and the cars that would drive crazy because the drivers knew me and wanted to honk and wave and offer me a ride. Even though I love Chicago and it feels like home it doesn't feel like that.

They weren't expensive paintings but they were more than I had. He told me to make an offer. And I stood there, wondering how I would feel if I left without it. The show runs tomorrow as well, the smart thing would be to go home and sleep on it then, if I still wanted it, I could go back tomorrow and make an offer.

But Barry has a car, I don't, and we're supposed to get 2-4" of snow tonight and the more I thought about it, the more I worried that it might slip away, that I might not get to act on this crush.

After I wrote a check (do I normally carry around a checkbook? No, I do not) we put the painting in Barry's car and went back to their apartment to eat nachos and watch dumb home decorating shows and play with their dogs. And all the time there I tried to engineer some buyer's remorse, wanting to check in with myself and see how I felt. Was that a weird rush, where I just bought something expensive in the heat of the moment without really thinking about it and now I would feel stupid, having this big painting as a reminder of that dumb afternoon?

No.

I was happy when we got back in the car and I could look at it again. And I moved some prints around in my living room, to give the painting a good spot. Now when I come home, walk through the kitchen, and into the living room BAM there they are, those two guys dancing.

Just because something starts out as a crush doesn't mean it won't blossom into love.

In Toronto for the week. Alex has spent the last 3 Canadian Thanksgivings (early October) in Chicago so I'm spending one in Toronto.
They spend a lot of money here on public service advertisements. In the subway there are beautifully art-directed signs encouraging me to visit an elderly person, discouraging me from spanking a child, and challenging me to find an alternative to pesticides for my lawn.
I may have blogged about this topic before but whatever. You know how Americans often advertise gasoline prices not by saying "Gas," but with the word "Unleaded"? Even though you couldn't find any leaded gas if you wanted some. Well, in Toronto they do a similar thing with milk; they refer to the fact that it is homogonized even though, as long as I've been alive, all milk is homogonized.
The thing is, they abbreviate it when they are advertising the price. So convenience stores boast, "$2 Homo!"
We saw the new Harry Potter movie last night with Alex's cousin. There is a Burger King as one of the movie theater's concessions. The B.K. serves a Canadian snack favorite, Poutine, which is french fries covered in beef gravy and sprinkled with cheese curds. I didn't have any Poutine but Alex and his cousin seemed to enjoy theirs.

In studying journalism I've learned this: to write about a trend, you need three examples and an expert to talk about it. Thusfar I only have two examples and no expert but this is a blog and not real journalism anyway.

Here's my observation: Words that begin with "Metro-" and end in "-al" are bad news. After "Metrosexual" I have now come across "Metrospiritual."

A definition:

Metrospirituality is the mainstreaming of Taoist, Buddhist, and Hindu values, among others, into an easily digestible, buyable form.

I'm hoping, based on the passage below, that the writer is ultimately snickering at Metrospirituality rather than embracing it.

One of the first things to catch the eye is a waist-high white Buddha-like sculpture. Not knowing quite what it was, I asked a sales associate, who didn’t immediately know the answer, but was extremely pleasant about it. We consulted a book on Buddhas, and when that didn’t help, asked another associate, who proclaimed it Ganesh, the elephant god, being held by his mother. Whether or not this is ultimately right, does it matter? It’s Indian, it’s expensive, and a lot of people have believed in it for a very long time, probably with very good reason.

When I start up my internet at home, it defaults to the Netscape homepage. This is different from my own homepage (which I DO know how to re-set, thanks) and it's covered with all sorts of headlines, including the one about Sulu. So I totally missed the more interesting Sheryl Swoopes coming out story.

A big news period here what with the ChiWhiSox winning the world series, the withdrawing of Harriet Miers, the pending indictments in the CIA leak case and Mr. Sulu, George Takai, is gay.

Notes the coming out story:

You come to realize, “This is who I am. And by gum, I’m not going to let it be a constraint!”

I guess that going public at age 68 means that you end up saying things like "by gum."

As a side note, apparently it wasn't a total secret. Takai is a long-time member of a L.A. branch of the gay running club Front Runners. I take it then that there isn't all that much overlap between Star Trek enthusiasts and runners???

Alex and I were chatting recently about the musical CATS. He's never seen it and I saw it because, well, it was the 80's and it seemed important for my family to do that at the time.
Anyway, for all of our chatter and giggling about the show we never asked the most obvious question; Why isn't there a similar musical about dogs?

Perhaps you might want to create such a musical yourself and begin your own musical theater empire. Too late! Been done! And, after what is described as a successful year-long run in Los Angeles, a second company of BARK! THE MUSICAL opened (or as the press release prefers "unleashed") in Chicago last night.

From the online description:

BARK! the rave new musical about man’s truest friend, as told and sung from the doggie point of view in a city Animal Shelter.

Howlingly funny, fast-paced and invariably poignant, BARK! is THE new American musical. With bone-clutching performances by a pedigree six member cast and original music by the songwriting team of Francis & Dillard, BARK! will have you yipping and yapping for more.

Exquisitely and outrageously directed and choreographed by the legendary Kay Cole—the original Maggie in A Chorus Line—BARK! has left the critics drooling.

Maybe it's just me but there is a definite "English as a second language" vibe to that description. "Exquisitely and outrageously directed" ???

If you got any enjoyment at all out of WAITING FOR GUFFMAN then really, you must check out the pictures of the cast (like CATS it's all actors dressed as animals) but, most especially, you must click on the audio samples from the original cast recording. The aforementioned Francis & Dillard have done some truly amazing work with the songs: "Sock-a-holic" ," FOOOOOOD", "Three Bitches" and "Whizzin' on Stuff".

The White Sox are going to the World Series!
I don't care much about baseball but it's exciting when a local team is in a big-ass championship. It was fun with the Bulls and since neither they nor the Bears are going to do anything any time soon, the White Sox is what I have to work with. Cool. My boss and several of my co-workers are diehard Sox supporters so they'll all be in good moods for a while.

Enough baseball, on to love. I hung out with my friend Katie yesterday. She was feeling low because she had gone to a wedding where the couple had written their own vows. As Katie described them, "they were full of that 'a dove shot out of my heart' type stuff." She was low because she realized that if she and her fella were to write their own vows, hers would have to begin, "Our love is like a fat kid with a bucket over his head trying to make his way through a hedge maze."

I'm happy that when I repeated all of this to Alex he 1)Laughed as hard as I did and 2)Agreed with me, that far from being a depressing analogy, it is an apt and kind of romantic one.

Also I really like Katie's intention to play "Green Onions" by Booker T and the MGs as her processional.

I am a little bit obsessed with the story of the alligator-swallowing python in Florida. Here's a great pic.
The 13-foot python tried to swallow the 6-foot alligator. From the AP report:
Although the gator may have been injured before the battle began -- wounds were found on it that apparently were not caused by python bites -- Mazzotti thinks it was alive when the battle began. And it may have clawed at the python's stomach as the snake tried to digest it, leading to the snake's demise.

The python was found with the gator's hindquarters protruding from its midsection. Its stomach still surrounded the alligator's head, shoulders and forelimbs. The remains were discovered and photographed Sept. 26 by Michael Barron, a helicopter pilot and wildlife researcher.

Pythons in the Everglades have been a problem for a while now. This story discusses several battles between pythons and alligators, witnessed by various tourists.

Rhonda update:
"What's up with all those old people dying on that boat in New York? It's so sad!"

(pause)

"If you can't swim you shouldn't be on a boat anyway!"

I saw M.I.A. with her fella, the dj Diplo last night. It was like seeing the kids from a Lynda Barry cartoon, all up on stage and winning. THAT was what made it a worthwhile live experience. That and getting to hear Diplo who was great and, like M.I.A. totally assured in his own taste and not concerned with what's cool. He began his set with "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits; that's how unconcerned with being cool he was.
The stage looked like an 11-year-old's rec room prepared for a party. There was, inexplicably, a paper mache helicopter the size of a sofa cushion, a wooden palm tree, a backdrop covered with spraypaint and glitter and christmas tree lights everywhere.

My brother is in the New York Times today! It's a trend piece about spelling bees for adults:

Josh Reynolds, 31, who created the monthly spelling bee at Freddy's after seeing "Spellbound," remembers being eliminated from a childhood bee for spelling the world "climb" incorrectly. "I spelled it c-l-i-m-e," he said. "It resonates with people. Everyone has a spelling bee story."

Go Josh!!!

What would be worse than being forced out of your high-level gov't job? Seeing this headline about yourself in the NEW YORK TIMES:

Former Chief of the F.D.A. Wasn't Fired, His Wife Says

I guess his mom wasn't available for comment. I am envious of the reporter who must have been soooooo psyched to find the spouse so willing to chat on the record. The story notes:

In an interview, Mrs. Crawford said: "This was a sudden decision. No one asked him to leave or forced him out. I can vouch for that."

Mrs. Crawford said she "knew everything" about her husband of 42 years, adding, "There could not be a more moral, upright person." She rejected suggestions by a government official that her husband had omitted material information from his financial disclosure statements.

The resignation came as a surprise. At a reception in his honor on Sept. 21, just 48 hours before the resignation was announced, Dr. Crawford gave no hint that he would be leaving the government.

Mrs. Crawford said she had attended the reception with her husband. At that time, "he did not know he was going to resign," she said.

She said it was not true that "we had stock that should have been sold quicker."

Yesterday one of my classes took a field trip to the Chicago Historical Society to see the exhibit Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America.

Small towns had community photographers who took pictures of important events--weddings, picnics and lynchings. Beginning in the early 1900's, printing technology had advanced enough that it was easy and cheap to print postcards so these community photographers would print up cards as souvenirs.

Souvenirs. The lynchings attracted audiences. Some of the photos have children standing in the front row of spectators, smiling proudly for the camera. Railroads sometimes ran specialty excursion trains to allow the maximum number of people a chance to observe.

I have to say that I thought I knew what lynching was and that was that. It was chilling to see this exhibit. At the end is a rack filled with hundreds and hundreds of cards. The card I took reads:

I will remember ED SILISBEE LYNCHED JANUARY 20, 1900 FORT SCOTT, KANSAS

After I was done I went to the lobby to wait for my fellow students. Rhonda was there, an African American woman who announced the first week of class that she was sick of all the complaining about Katrina--people have a responsibility to take care of themselves, to save money in the event of an emergency. If those people failed to plan, they have no one to blame but themselves.

Rhonda was looking at a brochure about Segway tours. I told her that I had ridden a Segway in Toronto and, after making small talk about high-end scooters, she asked me what I thought of the exhibit.

After I said my bit, she said that she didn't go into the exhibit and that she thought it was wrong to focus on a single side of lynching.

I hadn't really thought of lynching as being a nuanced, multi-sided affair so I asked for more information. She explained that she simply could not believe that black people didn't seek retribution. Her contention was that there was, in fact, a parallel series of black people lynching whites, it has just gone under publicized.

Remembering last week's lesson with Jane Feltes of This American Life, I asked the magic question: "So what do you make of that?"

She said that some races were bloodthirsty and took pictures; other races were subtle and left no trace.

My other questions went nowhere...how could I find out more about this secret history of parallel lynching? ("certain people have certain information") Have I never heard of this because I'm a white guy ("probably").

It was such a peculiar conversation. It was like pondering why no one ever talks about the millions of people that the Jews killed in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. Maybe because THAT OTHER SIDE DIDN'T HAPPEN AND DOESN'T EXIST?!?

I can understand why someone might choose not to see the exhibit--it's horrifying, that's the point obviously. I had to turn off THE CONTROL ROOM because of the video of children who were injured but not yet dead from American Bombings...I have a pretty low threshold for seeing gruesome stuff.

I think it would be foolish to say that I didn't want to watch THE CONTROL ROOM because of 9/11..."they" killed us, we exact revenge, etc.

But it would be ludicrous to say that actually, Iraqi militants kill U.S. children all the time; that there is a parallel history of killing our civillians that is just being hushed up.

School has started up again for me and I'm still re-learning balance and stuff like that, all of which is cutting into my panda monitoring time.

I have tried to cut down on my web surfing at work just because it's conspicuous and have returned to my old ways of copying and pasting stories into email and staring at those as though I am conducting a particularly rigorous bit of analysis. Anyway, Dan Froomkin writes a blog-ish column for the Washington Post and he received a letter from a reader. It's one of those things that takes many of my vague thoughts and condenses them into four succinct points. These all relate to Bush's repeated assertion "The only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon the mission."

The WaPo reader, named J. Harley McIlrath, asks this:

1. Who are 'the terrorists?' He's talking about Iraq. Are 'the insurgents' also 'the terrorists?' Has Bush ever defined just who 'the terrorists' are?

2. What would constitute a 'win' for the terrorists? What do they want? Do we know? Has Bush ever asked himself what 'the terrorists' want and whether or not it's reasonable? Tactics aside, what do they want? Don't tell me 'they hate freedom.'

3. What constitutes 'losing our nerve?' Is it losing one's nerve to pull resources back from an ineffectual approach and apply them to an approach that is more promising? How many times in WWII did we pull resources off one front to reinforce another?

4. What is 'the mission'. Can we abandon a 'mission' that has never been defined? To quote George Harrison: If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.

Barbara Bush has a way with words, as reported in the New York Times yesterday, Sept. 7:

As President Bush battled criticism over the response to Hurricane Katrina, his mother declared it a success for evacuees who "were underprivileged anyway," saying on Monday that many of the poor people she had seen while touring a Houston relocation site were faring better than before the storm hit.
"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas," Barbara Bush said in an interview on Monday with the radio program "Marketplace." "Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality."
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," she said, "so this is working very well for them."

Jacob Weisberg, writing in Slate, does a nice job (not even including the above passage) addressing the ways that race may have affected the Bushies response to Katrina. After making his way through the GOP's calculations that ignore black votes, Weisberg notes:

Because they don't see blacks as a current or potential constituency, Bush and his fellow Republicans do not respond out of the instinct of self-interest when dealing with their concerns. Helping low-income blacks is a matter of charity to them, not necessity.

When the levees broke on Tuesday, Aug. 30, no urge from the political gut overrode his natural instinct to spend another day vacationing at his ranch. When Bush finally got himself to the Gulf Coast three days later, he did his hugging in Biloxi, Miss., which is 71 percent white, with a mayor, governor, and two senators who are all Republicans. Bush's memorable comments were about rebuilding Sen. Trent Lott's porch and about how he used to enjoy getting hammered in New Orleans. Only when a firestorm of criticism and political damage broke out over the federal government's callousness did Bush open his eyes to black suffering.

Compare what happened when hurricanes Charley and Frances hit Florida in 2004. Though the damage from those storms was negligible in relation to Katrina's, the reaction from the White House was instinctive, rapid, and generous to the point of profligacy. Bush visited hurricane victims four times in six weeks and delivered relief checks personally. Michael Brown of FEMA, now widely regarded as an incompetent political hack, was so responsive that local officials praised the agency's performance.

In Scarborough now, a suburb of Toronto. Per the newspaper, there is a Trinidad fest going on in a nearby park today featuring live Soca bands and a contest for the best curried duck. Last night, on the way home on the train after dancing, we saw kids playing cricket in a parking lot under street lamps.
There are times when denial is a relief and it is certainly a relief to not be in the U.S. at this moment. Between New Orleans and Rehnquist, I'm enjoying pretending that I already live in this country instead.
It's been interesting watching one of the television newscasts here...imagine a Fox News of the left. "More self-congratulatory remarks from the White House today," said the anchor, introducing video of the President hugging a pre-selected flood victim. Another story explained that the Canadian government has agreed to raise gasoline prices in order to reduce demand so that the balance can go to the U.S.

Yo shorties, it's my birthday.
I'm home, awake the night before taking a trip to T.O. to see my fella, taking stock of what it means to be 36.
I have to say that the part of me that feels self-pity about being closer to 50 years old than to 20 is being kicked in the ass big-time by the news from New Orleans.
I don't quite know what I would do if I was asked to evacuate the City of Chicago. I could try living with my Dad in McHenry County, about an hour away. But they have little space and little money and perhaps, in the case of a disaster, little refuge.

I could take to the road. Lots of room on my credit cards and I could live for a while. That, in and of itself puts me in a rare place, I realize. What would it mean if I had no money, no credit, no nearby, yet reachable family, no lifeline? Would I be holed up inside the United Center, waiting for someone to figure out how to ferry all 25,000 of us to Minneapolis where, without money or family or friends or mailing address or phone or anything I would be expected to make it work out?

That calculation, of course, assumes that I have no kids. The governor of Texas, where the current residents of the New Orleans stadium will soon be housed has pledged that his schools will be open to the incoming domestic refugees from New Orleans.

Good Lord but being a kid was hard. HARD. It was for almost everyone I know well. I am so glad that I was not obliged to have my childhood ass shuttled 350 miles from home to go to school and try to learn long division as a weirdo charity case.

I got a haircut yesterday and, as always, marveled at the increasing percentage of gray and white hairs in the debris left on the barber's cape. This is a good problem to have.

My neighborhood, from The Chicago Sun-Times:

A veteran Chicago Police officer is expected in court today, accused of ordering women during two separate traffic stops to flash him and, in one case, to "do a little dance" without her panties.
Mike Allegretti, who works in the Albany Park District, was charged Thursday with bribery and official misconduct, a law enforcement source said.

On my way to Nashville this weekend to talk with my mom. It's been a long time so I'm feeling some trepidation.
Family hoo-ha aside, it's good to re-visit Tennessee, no? After all, not only is it home to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, it was the setting for Justice Sunday II and the state has one of the nation's worst problems with Crystal Meth. Woo hoo!

On the bus today I saw a man with a tattoo on his face. It occupied about as much space as a mutton chop sideburn would and it was a line drawing of a rat. The rat's nose was pointed towards the man's ear, the tail curled down towards his chin. The guy was late 30's or early 40's and the tattoo had that blue, blurry quality that aging, homemade tattoos can get.

It seems like a rat facial tattoo is a goal-oriented tattoo. It is there to please a friend, perhaps a gang, or to alienate someone. Maybe he snitched and this was his punishment, to go through life branded as a rat for all to see.

The man was riding with a woman and a little girl in a flowery dress. At one point the girl climbed into the rat man's lap and put her arms around his neck, tucking her head under his chin in that way that kids do when they want to feel secure. I was glad that somebody saw him as safe, not scary. Also glad that I wasn't obliged to be that person, of course. But glad for him all the same.

This may be my weirdest nightmare ever.

Last night, I had a dream where a brassy woman wearing too much makeup came up to me in a park and said that Karl Rove had told her that I told him she and I met in Tennessee.

I knew that I was in trouble and began trying to spin my way out of the situation. When I was done I looked down to see that the belt had been removed from my pants (which were now around my ankles) and the belt was holding me to a tree.

It had all been a prank by this woman and Rove...the accusation was just a ruse to distract me so that I could be tied to a tree. For no purpose other than simple humiliation.

Fucking Karl Rove.

I missed an important anniversary recently-the 25th anniversary of The Blues Brothers Movie. Which I have never seen. I say that and people are shocked and amazed, like I'm missing out on something truly wonderful. Perhaps I am but so far I'm not feeling the loss.

A reporter from the Chicago Sun Times went to the Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, IL which is where the movie's shopping mall sequence was filmed. Harvey was already something of a dump and the mall had been closed for a year when the movie set up shop. The article had all sorts of cool info in it, for instance the extras kept stealing stuff from the sets.

The Dixie Square Mall is still standing and, as you might imagine, is fairly horrifying inside. The story mentioned offhandedly that the mall is beloved by enthusiasts of dead malls.

Dead malls???

"I calmly and politely told them I was working on a website devoted to the decline of retail ventures in suburbia" notes one dead mall enthusiast, writing on deadmalls.com about the cops who wanted to know why he pulled into the parking lot of the Dixie Square Mall. He has lots of pictures and is excited to find some original signage in a Sears.

The site has a map of the U.S. which takes you to dead mall info throughout this great nation. Good to know that 100 Oaks which I remember as a shitty mall in Nashville as evolved into a shitty big-box retailer. And our friends to the North aren't left out either...The Galleria in London, Ontario gets a mention.

Deadmalls.com is not the only game in town. Casino Death Watch, while much less stylish than deadmalls is pretty much what the title suggests. Groceteria looks at supermarkets from the 1920s to the 1970s. And DefunctParks.com talks about amusement parks that aren't here anymore.

I checked out the Defunct Parks site to read about Riverview, an amusement park that used to be on the north side of the city (and which now is, ta da, a strip mall.) Open from 1904 to 1967, I've seen it in documentaries and heard about it with some misty nostalgia.

Laura Flamm, writing in what was apparently an A.P. History paper published on the site, paints a less rosy picture.

One of the midway games that started out as a "Dunk the Bozo the Clown" game in which contestants threw balls at a target that would release a man into a tank of water turned into "Dunk the Nig**r" during the 1940’s.

African American men were hired to sit in the tanks and taunt white passersby, who often would throw the balls at the African American in the tank rather than at the target. The title of the game was later changed to the more politically correct "African Dip" and was eventually closed by Schmidt in the late 1950’s after much pressure from the NAACP.

The game left a lasting effect, as well. It allowed ethnically diverse Chicagoans to define themselves as "white" and to develop a sense of racial solidarity that "obscured the particulars of their own ethnic backgrounds." This development served to further segregate the city.

Fights sprang up more frequently at Riverview after this, and by the 1960’s Riverview required its own police force.

"African Dip"?

Two good music stories this morning.
One is the "Jack" format. I feel every so slightly ahead of the curve on this one. Last year, while riding the subway in Toronto, I saw a poster advertising JACK radio with all sorts of artists swirling around demonstrating what a darn eclectic format it was. I missed the point and thought J-A-C-K were the call letters for the station and tried to figure out what the naming protocol was for Canadian broadcasters.

Nope, "JACK" (which American stations are importing from Canada) means eclectic, broad playlists. The country version is called "HANK". The Chicago Tribune thoughtfully published a playlist:

The Doors, ''Love Me Two Times''
Switchfoot, ''Dare You to Move''
Sonny and Cher, ''I Got You Babe''
a-ha, ''Take on Me''
Toad the Wet Sprocket, ''All I Want''
Manfred Mann's Earth Band, ''Blinded by the Light''
Del Amitri, ''Roll to Me''
Tom Petty, ''I Won't Back Down''
Five for Fighting, ''Superman''
The Pretenders, ''Back on the Chain Gang''
Cracker, ''Low''
Boz Scaggs, ''Lowdown''
Prince, ''1999''
Cheap Trick, ''Don't Be Cruel''

So far, this seems like it might be Jean Teasdale's ipod but I'm willing to give it some time. Hard to argue against radio broadening playlists, even if it does mean adding that fucking Del Amitri song.

A great, great story in Slate by Jody Rosen about the musical genre "chill". An NYC radio station has changed its format from "smooth jazz" to "chill" and the helpful press release has described chill thusly:

It's an "attitude," a "lifestyle," an "audio aphrodisiac" whose "smooth hypnotic texture" enables listeners to "transcend from stress."

Which means what exactly? The story is great and well worth reading but I've pulled out a large chunk below.

Pop genres are famously nebulous things—just corner a music critic and ask him to explain postpunk or microhouse—but chillout may well be the most elastic category of them all, encompassing virtually any moderately laid-back music you can name.

Chillout really is just the latest brand name for easy listening, a genre that gets reinvented every decade or so. Lounge, soft rock, adult contemporary ballads, smooth jazz: As successive pop generations have rounded the corner toward age 30, each has lowered the volume, embracing music geared toward relaxation in the home. (Nineteenth-century parlor songs were the easy listening of their day—chillout for Victorians.) The current boom market in chill music is an indication that many former ravers now have jobs and mortgages and children, and have traded in nightlife for bourgeois domesticity. Sooner or later, every club kid has to grow up and make peace with dinner music.

But the genius of chillout is how it plays it both ways. The sounds are mellow, perfect for folding laundry to, but the sleek album-cover graphics, which could be on a club flyer, and the images of young bodies splayed on Balearic beaches, insist that the party's not really over. Your hairline may be receding, the baby might be screaming; but stick a Hotel Costes CD on the stereo, and your living room becomes the Chillout Room. As altered states of coolness and hipness go, it's hard to beat incipient middle age. For millions of record buyers, chillout offers an antidote.

Indeed.

A good news morning thusfar.

From the Washington Post, a nice story about Tokyo's Akihabara district which is believed to be the first urban enclave that caters to nerds (or in Japanese "otaku")

In a Chinatown you will find dim-sum restaurants. In a gay-borhood you'll find rainbow colored doo-dads. And in a nerd enclave?

Well there are "costume cafes" where the waitresses wear anime outfits and speak in squeaky voices. There are transparent lockers where nerds can arrange little dioramas of their action figures to show them off. There are comic book stores, of course, and game arcades. Also eyeglass adjustment kiosks.

As the story points out, there is a very weird undercurrent in some anime. One of the otaku, a 34 year-old computer programmer, maintains a collection of 130 life-size pillows of female anime characters.

"There are some people who do lose their grip on reality, but that is not me -- or most of us," said (the nerd), a chubby man with glasses who this year started dating a woman steadily for the first time. She's an anime artist. "For me, the pillows have been my source of unconditional love, a reminder of when I used to be hugged by my parents. There is nothing strange about it."

The other story that I find totally fascinating (and I'm afraid I don't have a better transition than this very sentence) is the phenomenon of "Trucker Bombs".

Roadside litter comes in all shapes and sizes — from dirty diapers to syringes — but there's one category that out-grosses the rest: trucker bombs.

Most drivers whiz along the nation's highways largely oblivious to their roadside surroundings. But next time you are out there, take a closer look.

"As soon as you look for it you’ll see it," says Megan Warfield, litter programs coordinator at Washington state's Department of Ecology. "You just see them glistening in the sun. It’s just gross."

They are trucker bombs, plastic jugs full of urine tossed by truckers, and even non-truckers, who refuse to make a proper potty stop to relieve themselves.

The link has a lovely photograph of several bombs arranged on a grassy slope.

As you might imagine, when mowing roadsides, these bombs do indeed "explode" when mowers hit them.

Other than the total gross-out factor, my favorite part of this story is how very on-message Leigh Strope, a spokeswoman for the Teamsters union, is when discussing this topic.

"You won't find Teamsters urinating in jugs and littering the nation's highways," she says. "Our drivers are guaranteed rest and dinner breaks because it's in their union contract."

Go Union!

I'm incredibly agitated about a story I've just read in the New Yorker.

As you may remember, one of George Bush's lines, particularly when he was discussing education was the concept of "the soft bigotry of low expectations." To paraphrase: rather than assume that a (black, latino, female, minority) student can accomplish, I will assume, at the start, that you lack the right stuff to compete. I will assume that you can never achieve as much, to be so smart as to do well on this here standardized test.

Bush, of course, was referring to testing and suggesting that it was wrong to suggest that, say, someone who grew up poor and raised by his grandmother might perform differently on a standardized test than a kid born to affluence who never had to worry if there was enough milk in the fridge. It's wrong to change the standard because someone, due to his circumstances, might perhaps have difficulty meeting the standard.

I'm twisting this example, for my own purposes. Although Bush used the concept of the soft bigotry of low expectations as a trojan horse to do all sorts of nasty behavior, I am using it to talk about gay men.

David Feinberg wrote a couple of great comic novels before he died of AIDS and, in one of them, he suggested that the travesty wrought by HIV infections was so great that gay men would get the hint and never, ever let it happen again.

Well, as this New Yorker article indicates, this is completely not the case. As soon as the drug cocktails went on the market, gay men went right back to their 1970's ways, screwing as much as possible, taking drugs to enhance their libidos (the article references crystal meth and viagra) and the explanation for it all is that we ("we" means "gay men") have lots of unresolved sadness and it is understandable that we would try to address it by having lots of unsafe sex.

Ugh.

Gay men, of which I am one, embarrass me all the damn time. Some of the time this is because I am a little bit too highly strung. Some of the time, however, it is because political correctness can, in fact, go too far.

To wit:

The New Yorker articles references the idea that it has become a bad idea to emhpasize the fact that you should, you know, stay HIV negative. Because this emphasis might make those who are positive feel bad about themselves.

Huh?

You mean it's wrong to counsel teen-age girls not to get pregnant because it would make the teens who WERE teen moms feel bad? It's wrong to ask people not to smoke in a public place because it might make those who are addicted to nicotine feel bad?

It's a cute trick to suggest that the only reason all of us don't fuck as much and as often as we care to is that societal norms prohibit it. Or that women (obsessed with that whole womb-thing) stand in the way of men (eager to spread that seed.) Or that disease and preganacy, easily curtailed by antibiotics and contraceptives, are the only barriers to fucking as much as we want, whenever we want.

Fucking a lot of strangers seems to be a bad idea, biologically speaking. It's possible that cultural taboos have risen up against this practice, in the same way that a cultural taboo might develop against shellfish or pork in a culture with little hygeine and no refrigeration. But you really do need that hygeine and refrigeration. If it's that important to have sex with a lot of strangers, it's not possible to put on a condom?!? It's not just a prissy, sex-negative society that rules against sticking your un-shielded dick inside lots of folks.

I appreciate that people who have been told for so long that their desires are wrong would resent anyone suggesting that their desires may be problematic. However, gay men really need to get a grip. Straight men do not assume that they are entiteled to bed every woman who expresses interest. Gay men should not assume that they are somehow entitled to something more. Gay men get to struggle to find a mate, there ya go. Not to endlessly dick around with a bazillion partners, how ever willing those partners might be and however enticing that might sound.

And if these men are refusing to curb their behavior; to not even adopt the norms of safe sex but to abandon them entirely--if we give these men a pass, if we say that they are unable to curb their desires because of the failures of society...well isnt' that just the soft bigotry of low expectations?

If I don't stop looking at Chicagocrime.org then I'm going to be late for work.

It's a database of crimes in Chicago. You can sort it geographically, here's my neighborhood, you can sort it by crime, here's all the embezzlement, and also by date and police district.

And as if this wasn't enough for me to geek out regarding my kind of town, The Encyclopedia of Chicago is now online. The ordinary, published-book version came out last fall and I haven't bought it yet but the online version is awful nice.

For purposes of comparison, here's what the encyclopedia has to say about my neighborhood. Sadly, there is no embezzlement-specific entry but here's a nice little entry that addresses our reputation.

As one journalist put it in 1930, “In all the seven seas and the lands bordering thereon there is probably no name which more quickly calls up thoughts of crime, violence and wickedness than does that of Chicago.”

My heart swells with pride. Okay, gotta get going.

Turned in the fucking toupee story yesterday so I'm winding down this term.

Tonight I went with my friend Rosemary to see David Rakoff read from his upcoming book titled "Don't Get Too Comfortable." He was great, one of those writers like Sarah Vowell who I would rather listen to than read. Anyway during the Q&A someone asked him about writing this, his second book. His answer won't be as good on the page as it was on the stage since you won't have the benefit of timing.

"Writing is like pulling teeth. Out of your dick."

Yes, that seems about right.

It's the beginning of May, the time when Chicago residents wonder to themselves where they put their winter gloves. We are supposed to get some snow flurries today.

Ugh.

Feeling a little sad this morning over the death of Wanky the elephant. Wanky was living in Lincoln Park Zoo but her companions have passed away and, being social, it wasn't good for her to be alone. Animal rights protesters have argued that, being the kind of place that snows in May, Lincoln Park Zoo isn't good for ANY elephants (apart from the general, grim feeling of giant animals confined to very small albeit "natural looking" settings.")

Anyway, Wanky was loaded into a truck bound for a secret location (they didn't want protesters to show up THERE which could, I suppose, result in an elephant circling the nation's highways like a cargo load of toxic waste, unable to find a place to stop), the secret location turned out to be Salt Lake City (today's high 63 degrees so at least that's something).

On the way there Wanky lay down and began exhibiting difficulty breathing. Upon arrival the decision was made to euthanize her and that, it seems, is that.

I've gone so long without blogging that I wasn't able to talk about the giant mob round-up last week or my trip to Seattle or any of that; I have to return with a dead elephant. Ugh.

In happier ailing elephant news, the Washington Post is headlining Doubts About Mandate for Bush, GOP By John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei

As the president passed the 100-day mark of his second term over the weekend, the main question facing Bush and his party is whether they misread the November elections. With the president's poll numbers down, and the Republican majority ensnared in ethical controversy, things look much less like a once-a-generation realignment.

Instead, some political analysts say it is just as likely that Washington is witnessing a happens-all-the-time phenomenon -- the mistaken assumption by politicians that an election won on narrow grounds is a mandate for something broad.

Six months ago it seemed like we were all totally doomed. Now I'm feeling only partially doomed. Hey, every bit counts.

Headline from Today's Sun Times: Acting River Grove mayor defeats genital-piercing rival

Ending one of the more bizarre suburban mayoral races, acting Village President Marilynn May stomped challenger Paul Collurafici, a tattoo parlor owner who argued the suburb was being left behind but found his occupation a bigger campaign issue.

(Village Trustee Raymond) Bernero questioned why Collurafici made no mention of his tattoo studio on his campaign Web site and why he removed photos of pierced vaginas, nipples and other body parts from his company's Web site after launching his mayoral campaign.

"I'm a big fan of vaginas, but this is really gross stuff," Bernero told the Sun-Times. "This is close-ups of women's vaginas with stuff stuck through there."

Bernero later sent a letter to the Sun-Times, apologizing if he offended anyone but sticking by his "blunt honesty" in attacking Collurafici's honesty.

"Finally, please let your readers know that there is no 'fan club,' " Bernero wrote. "It was a joke. All requests for membership, along with submitted dues, will be returned promptly."

About a quarter of the two dozen supporters at Collurafici's election night party sported tattoos, ranging from Grim Reapers and skulls to naked women. One supporter who identified himself as "Tattoo Mike" had Frankenstein-style electrodes inked on his neck.

Collurafici says he has no tattoos or piercings, but inherited the business from his brother, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1996.

Bernero wasn't buying.

"He said he kept the shop as a memorial to his dead brother," Bernero said. "Most people light a candle. You don't pierce vaginas."

I would agree with Bernero that conventional wisdom is that folks don't express grief via genital piercings. But I'm hopeful that with the recent deaths of the Pope, Teri Schaivo, et al that I might be proven wrong.

It's a little bit of nerd heaven today.
In my office while rice boils and fish thaws for dinner.
What has brought on this nerdy bliss?
A few things.
For one, last night I took the first in a series of classes from 500 Clown. You know of The Blue Man Group, right? Well, if the Blue Man Group is U2 then 500 Clown is The Ramones, the scrappy, less exalted version of the same thing (in this case, European art clowning rather than guitar based anthemic music.)
There was a time in my life when I thought that I was going to write screenplays or do standup or otherwise be an entertainer. So when I took classes like this I thought that I was actually doing something worthy, I was developing my craft. Because when you try and describe a theater/improv/acting class to someone it's hard to not sound like an idiot.
For instance
Here's the first exercise we did last night. We divided the dozen people into two groups. Here were our instructions. "Everybody has to carry everyone else and everybody will get carried by everyone else. You can speak if you have an injury or other safety issue that needs attention but otherwise no talking. Okay go."

Well what the hell do you do with that? In the retelling, I mean, not in the doing. I remember the first class I took with Del Close, he divided us into two groups and said, "Invent a ritual. It might take an hour or so. Go."

It is, as you might imagine, difficult to re-tell these stories of how one spent one's evening without adding in, "one day, I will be developing sitcoms and we will be rich, rich, rich!" Pretty much everyone you've ever heard of who has come out of the Chicago comedy scene-John Belushi and Bill Murray through Tina Fey passed through Del.

These days I don't think I will be having much to do with sitcoms and so taking a class like the one 500 Clown offers, the one where I learned about being physically expressive on stage, are just for fun, a hobby.

It says quite a bit about me and sports that the thing that pushed me to enroll in the workshop was that I signed up to play on a volleyball team which was so, so not my thing, that when I thought "I can think of a MILLION things I would rather do than this!" that the thought of having to figure out non-verbal ways of carrying and being carried by a bunch of strangers sounded like a huge improvement.

Anyway, I totally loved it and if you don't get it, that's okay. It probably won't translate into something mainstream and lucrative for me down the line. It's just my idea of fun.

Today I learned that I don't have to leaven my story for Advanced Magazine writing with the elements I had thrown in there just to make it sound better. I can focus on what I want to focus on. Which is toupees. More another time...the timer on the rice just went "bing".

I bought the new ATLANTIC today, the one with the David Foster Wallace piece about Talk Radio. DFWallace makes me happy, except for the times when he gets on my nerves. If you've never read him try A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again where he writes about his week on a cruise ship.

The DFW style is to go deep, deep, deep into a topic, with a million footnotes which themselves have footnotes. He is the master of the tangent, the aside, the trifle that earns focus.

So two things; one is that he has a piece, a fucking humongo 35,000 word piece (for frame of reference, 500 words is about 2 double spaced pages) and the designers of the Atlantic have come up with an ingenious system for his footnotes making them more like hypertext. Really, even if you don't care to read 35K words on right wing talk radio, pick up a copy of the magazine (the link doesn't seem to lead you to the story) and see what they did.

Basically, everyplace where you might put a footnote, they've put the word in a color. Then the footnote appears in the side of the text, in that color. If you've ever used the feature in Microsoft Office that lets people write their notes in little bubbles that appear next to the text, that's what the effect is like. And it works wonderfully.

Nerdilicious.

Enough with the pope nerds already. Yes, yes he was a very spiritual man, we get it.
My favorite was when NPR dug up one of the pope's boyhood friends from Poland. So the poor man was 1)incredibly old and hard of hearing and 2)not a native speaker of english.

Fortunately the 80-something told us that the pope was a very spiritual man. So at least that's cleared up.

Daniel Gross, writing in SLATE, uses an economic metaphor to talk about the Republicans. Like an overheated stock, the party may have peaked and begun a decline.

Given their triumph in last November's elections (and their behavior since), the Republicans have nowhere to go but down. Indeed, polls and nimble online right-wing media types (Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan) are already starting to call a top in the Republicans' stock. The House and the Senate can't agree on the basics of a budget, the dwindling but vital core of northeast Republicans can't abide their southern and western compadres, and Tom DeLay is morphing into Jim Wright.

today's Washington Post discusses the effects of the Schiavo case on the party

Aggravating GOP frustrations are disturbing new polls, including a CBS survey that found that 82 percent of Americans -- including a whopping 68 percent of people who identify themselves as evangelical Christians -- think Congress's intervention was wrong.

Of course we haven't even gotten to Social Security (Bush's First Defeat per Jacob Weisberg) and, oh yeah, Iraq.

I am done hearing about feeding tubes, persistent vegetative states, all this fun stuff.
I'm big on death with dignity but not at all thrilled with the prospects of someone, vegetative or not, starving/dehydrating to death. Of course there is no medically assisted suicide since she can't commit suicide since she is a vegetable. Sigh. This is a mess.

I have a co-worker who is loud, rude, generally unpleasant. Oh and nerdy, not in the appealing "I'm super passionate about an esoteric subject" way but in the too much science fiction way. And not so good at using his indoor voice.

Apparently a conversation at his desk got a little heated because he just said "not 'Trekkies'! Trekkers! Trekkers!"

so now you know

On Wednesday night I went to hear Jeff Chang read from his book "Can't Stop Won't Stop" in an itty-bitty gallery space in the West Loop. I got there about 20 minutes before it started and took a folding chair a respectable distance from the handful of other people there. I was complimenting myself on having such great taste and being so cool as to be one of the few people there...this lasted about ten minutes and then 75 or so people came in, jammed into the doorway, sitting on the floor and otherwise making the gallery staff nervous with the way they would brush up against some of the art.

The book is subtitled "A History of the Hip Hop Generation" and it is a big, nerdy wet dream. Scholarly without being a Greil Marcus wankfest, Chang begins the narrative not with DJ Kool Herc DJ-ing in a Bronx rec room but with post-colonial politics and music in 1960's Jamaica.

One thing that I thought was especially interesting was what he had to say about the non-comprehensiveness of the book. Some might ask-what about all the activity in Atlanta/Philadelphia/Miami/Brooklyn/Insert Geographic Locale Here...how could you leave THAT out of this history??? The answer is that he set out to write a history from the street level that looks up, rather than a view from the top down. And to do that, you have to limit the geographic focus.

From the corrections section of The New York Times, via the website Regret The Error:

An Editorial Observer column in The Times yesterday incorrectly cited lyrics from a Michael Jackson song. The phrase "mamase mamasa mamakosa" ends the song "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," not "Working Day and Night."

While not actually blogging lately, I think about blogging all the time. And really, it's the thought that counts, no?

Feeling crappy today...I have a class tomorrow afternoon and, as part of the class, we are to include an analysis of a magazine and interview someone who works for the magazine, including their quotes in our report. It doesn't have to be a high-up person; an intern will do.

Naturally I have put this off and put this off since it's much better to dread something than to actually do it. Anyway today I called and, surprise, I didn't get some intern answering phones at the front desk but I got the switchboard for the conglomerate that owns the magazine.

After convincing the operator to find an intern for me, I got an intern's voice mail. Sigh.

So it's entirely possible that I will not have any quotes tomorrow which would be a bad thing (and a bad grade.)

*UPDATE* total false alarm; I got through to an editor, got my quotes, all is fine.

Thanks for scrolling past my whining though; it's genuinely appreciated.

My new, favorite place on the web is called 43 folders (not to be confused with 43 things) which is one big Virgo Nerd Central. All sorts of interesting solutions to too much chaos, not enough productivity.

Going through the archives, I found an interesting tip-Vaccuming The Lungs or How To Breathe Deeply When You're Nervous. It goes like this:

1)Exhale everything
2)Bend over at the waist (which gets the last bit of air out) and don't let any new air in
3)Stand up and wait about 10 seconds...by this time your body is craving a nice inhale
4)When you can't stand it anymore, breathe.

As the author says, this "reboots your lungs." and moves you away from nervous breathing.

Seth Stevenson writes for SLATE about television commercials, among other topics. From his review of the Superbowl ads:

Cialis runs a spot backed by old-time pop hit "Be My Baby." And I have to say, erectile dysfunction and the Philadelphia sound go great together.

It's a big day for dolls in the news.
There is, of course, the hoax photograph of the captured American soldier who is, in fact, a doll (nice pics here)

Here in Chicago we are into the second day of the story about a new doll from the American Girl collection. I pass by "American Girl Place" every day going to and from work...it's sort of a Nike Town of dolls. "Marisol", the newest American Girl doll is being hyped in one of the store's display windows (she likes dancing lessons too apparently.)

All the American Girl dolls have stories outlined in books. Marisol's story is that she grew up in the (real) Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen. In the story, Marisol's parents say that the neighborhood is a bad place to grow up-they move the family to the suburbs.

Pilsen residents are pissed and local politicians are speaking out. Leading to today's headline in the Sun Times:

Politicians beat up on American Girl doll

Being such a prolific blogger, I've decided I need access to yet another vessel in which I may pour my thoughts and links.

I was pleased to be asked to join this group and I said "yes." So now you can look for my failure to post in two different places.

Next up...learning how to have that list of blogs that runs down one side of one's own blog.

After a year's experiment, I'm giving up my cable tv. I like it but not $55/month worth and there are no presidential campaigns to obsess over this year (whew.)

But I really enjoy reading writers who have television as their beats. Dana Stevens in SLATE and, increasingly, Virginia Heffernan in the NYT who sift through the shows, looking for the golden moments.

I'm intrigued by the Flavor Flav/Bridgette Nielsen pairing but have no interest in watching the show. Thankfully, Heffernan is professionally obligated and writes in today's NYT about a song that appears in "Strange Love" the show that documents the pair:

Girl from Denmark, snowy white

Boy from projects, black as night

He's a jester; she's a fox

She likes smoking; he likes clocks

That's the flavor, that's the flavor of love

It's always so satisfying when a writer puts words to an idea I didn't even know I had. This is from today's NYT and it's from a review of the new season of ALIAS. The reviewer, Virginia Heffernan compares the show to a comic book and goes on to observe oh so accurately:

Let's be honest. Many of us don't like comic books and have feigned interest in their jumpy bif-bam fighting scenes and the way they redeem loser guys, only to impress and minister to those loser guys. And now we can admit that while the redemption dynamic - little X-Men boys finding in their eccentricity and loneliness a superpower - is touching, there's nothing duller than listening to someone explain, in all seriousness, the Syndicate and the Shadow Force and the Hard Drive and the Plutonium Lance. And the characters: lame. One is good and the other is evil, and then one is evil pretending to be good, and then one is good pretending to be evil. Zzzzz.

I hope that ’05 is suiting all of y’all. I’m in favor of calling this “Ought Five” but that’s just me. Still, if you agree, spread the word. Also, according to two calendars on my wall, it’s the year of the Rooster (that’s me!) so please consider, if not calling this “ought five” then perhaps, “Year of the big cock.”

First dance class in a few weeks and Boogie introduced me to another Drew or, as she put it, her two favorite Drews got to meet. He’s taller than me, around the same age, and did something in his life that involved building upper arm strength (which I, clearly, have not) but the key is that he’s about 4 inches taller than me. This means that when we are in class together, I can be identified as “little Drew”. How cool is that?

Between classes (not working today I attended the 6 pm class although next week I’ll be attending the 7:30 class obliging a Big Drew/Little Drew situation) I thanked Boogie for introducing the other Drew to me and asked, “he doesn’t play on my team, does he?” He has some “yes”es…he is taking a goddamn dance class, for instance, and he is wearing one of those earrings that look like a “U” with metal spheres on the ends but in his upper ear (left) and he seems to be chummy with a 30-something black woman who is also taking the class. On the other hand, he looks like a football dude and I’m inclined to think no.

Regardless, when I asked Boogie she pointed at my hand and said, “it doesn’t matter! You’re married!!!”

I am not, even in Canada, married even though two fellows can do that there if they are so inclined. We are calling this state “Novio” which is (Mexican) Spanish slang for “boyfriend” and, more literally “engagement”. The example I always use is Spanish-Language internet browsers…if you have a problem with the modem the message will say that you’ve lost your novio.

Marriage? Well, I’m inclined towards “yes” but that means we would have to be living, you know, in the same city and everything. So this doesn’t mean “engagement” as in “pre-wedding” but rather Novio-ness is, in and of itself, a respected state. I took some plastic rings, one blue and one red to Toronto for Xmas along with a poem (about red and blue making purple) but Alex managed to go to an actual jewelry store and buy some actual rings. Classy, stainless steel, with a tiny diamond (not vulgar but enough to know that I didn’t just disassemble a machine and stick it on my finger.) So married? No. But engaged, committed, intent of the give and take between these two points? Oh yes, yes indeed I am.

We spent the past 10 or so days together, and I was left wanting a lot more which seems encouraging. I mean I could have wanted him to get the hell out and let me get back to my things. However, I feel as though I have crossed two important thresholds of intimacy.

1) My CDs have been re-arranged
First of all, we should say that I was asking for it. My CDs overflow their shelves, they are organized not so much by genre or by alphabetization but by my internal whim. I know where things are, not because an outsider could ever figure it out, but because I know where every CD is in relation to everything else.
Alex has sorted them into logical categories (Spoken Word/Comedy, Xmas, weird CDs based on cartoon programs, etc.) and everything else alphabetized, sort of.
This drives me crazy way out of proportion. Partly because I disagree with the discs that have been suddenly elevated to “heavy rotation” (such as Fountains of Wayne which had been languishing in the “sort of rock based, don’t want to sell it just yet,” along with Husker Du and U2.) And partly because I don’t want the Alt. Country mixed in next to the Prince and, oh forget it. If I have to explain, there’s no use. So the old jazz, the country, the guitar based stuff, the R&B…oh dear.

2) I have received a major note about my wardrobe. I should say, in his defense, that Alex did this in the most gracious way imaginable, so gracious, in fact, that I didn’t even recognize that it was a correction until it was well underway.

The “well underway” part was when Alex mentioned that I seemed to have picked up a bit of Plumber’s Butt, that I didn’t have said butt before so this must be a recent change and that I should, perhaps, consider wearing my pants higher than I have grown accustomed to wearing them.

Here is where pants go—up, up up. The back of the pants goes well above the butt, the front goes under the bellybutton but not under the spare tire itself. The pants go *around* the spare tire, above the hipbones, the belt is tight enough to keep the whole shebang elevated, not so tight as to make it impossible to sit.

This is not bad, actually, and I wasn’t crazy about my butt crack being on display.

I wouldn’t want to call this the definition of intimacy but I do think it’s a killer manifestation of it. He’s already on board with being with me (what with the ring and all), and he thinks I could look even cooler. He said it and I heard it (and moved past the part of being secretly hurt that he doesn’t think I’m actually, you know, entirely flawless)

Eventually there we were, in the Gap Outlet, looking at some brown flares that went unpurchased but I got a tutorial in wearing flattering pants and he got a boyfriend who doesn’t inadvertently display his bootie cleavage.

Listening to “Rio Baille Funk: Favela Booty Beats,” which is amazing. Alex got it for me for Xmas and I listen to it a lot. It sounds sort of like Florida booty rap but with samples that have lots of accordion. It’s all in Portuguese which I don’t speak. But the liner notes say that this is party music. Anyway, I gave a copy to Boogie with these notes from her class.

-Be big, it’s easier to make it small than to do the opposite.

-It’s already perfect. Even that part. All. Ready. Perfect.

-Make eye contact with those you dance with. Endeavor to give good face.

Good face to all of y’all in Ought Five.