The press can hardly say enough good things about James Brown and rightly so. As for poor Gerald Ford, well the NY Times does a classic job of damning with faint praise:

He might have been the nice guy down the street suddenly put in charge of the nation, and if he seemed a bit predictable, he was also safe, reliable and reassuring. He placed no intolerable intellectual or psychological burdens on a weary land...

60 MINUTES did a story this past Sunday about a find of documents created by the Nazis during the holocaust. I'm assuming that the timing of this story had more to do with refuting the recent Iranian holocaust-denial-palooza than with bringing up lousy memories for the tribe at Hanukkah. I mean, it's different to imagine 60 MINUTES doing an expose on The Crusades, say, at Christmas.

That's not the point. The point is that there was one especially awful piece of narration. I have the podcast for use in transcription:

And just look at the names of the executed. Crowded onto pages, single-spaced. It must have been tiring just to write this, let alone kill them all.

That's the thing about genocide-- it's tiring. Especially the paperwork, geez!

The best part about having one's superpowers be cuddles is that you get to wear cut off sweats and tube socks instead of a lycra caped thingy.

It's going to snow tonight. The temperature has dropped about 35 degrees since yesterday afternoon and the sky is milky.

Of course the rule of television news is that you have to send a camera crew out to the airport (because flights are delayed due to snow--this is, you know, news) and WGN has, indeed, sent someone out to O'Hare to determine that, even though there is no actual snow yet, there will be snow and therefore delays (bring on the visuals of groggy visitors dozing uncomfortably in airport chairs).

But no snow yet and so, in a bold move, the station sent Juan Carlos Fanjul (rhymes with "Tool") out to the city's road salt storage facility for the broadcast's lead story. There will be salt dispersal vehicles on the go, per Fanjul.

In Toronto for the week. Last night we attended a gay wedding and, as part of the reception, ate unbelievably gay salads.

What, you may ask, tags a salad as being identifiably homosexual? Two words: grilled cantaloupe.

There are some pop cultural phenomena that I just avoid in the hopes that they will go away (see: Danity Kane) but Kevin Federline has crossed over into some deeply weird realm where he is worth paying attention to just for the car wreck factor (see: Courtney Love)

It's worth remembering every now and again that marketing and nepotism will only get you so far.

As a side note, this is the most peculiar approach to promoting his new record. Go ahead click on it, even it you're at work. It doesn't make any noise and it doesn't make a lick of sense (thanks to Mike for the tip)

Anyway, Mr. Federline was in Chicago promoting his new record on Wednesday at the House of Blues. Ticket sales were not especially robust so they gave tickets away. "We would have gone if I was there," Alex pointed out, correctly, "we could each pretend it was the other one's fault."

Sadly, Alex is not yet living here but thankfully someone calling himself Captainkiwi did attend the show and has written all kinds of entertaining stuff about the experience here.

Captainkiwi points out that a bunch of Northwestern Law Students went all Rocky Horror on the concert, dressing in fine Federline style (wifebeater under blazer, fedora, etc.) and carrying signs reading "Cry Me a Wigger" and that the ultimately large-ish audience was 100% there to mock hard.

"Watch out Billboard.... " Captainkiwi concludes, "The new 'Tom Arnold of the Music Industry' is headed your way.

Listening to the Bush press conference where he came right out and said that he lied to a trio of journalists about his support for Rumsfeld because he thought that would be more advantageous than telling the truth. Amazing. From Ana Marie Cox, liveblogging the press conference at Time:

1:12: "I didn't want to inject a major decision about the war into the final days of the campaign." Even though it might have saved my majority. I am an asshat. Alternate translation: "I lied because I could not tell you the truth." ALSO: talk about playing politics with foreign policy!
1:13 "I thought we were going to be fine... shows what I know!" So they're sticking with the "we are actually political strategy idiots" defense, rather than the "we were lying about that too." Well, that's kind of comforting.

Also in the post-game analysis, it's cheering to see that conservative Arizona managed to reject an anti-gay marriage amendment.

One exciting, old-school bit of apparent election stealing going on here in Chicago yesterday.

Chicago is in Cook County and there is a post called Cook County President. I'm not entirely clear what the position does, other than hand out patronage jobs. The incumbent was a man named John Stroger who won the primary back in the spring in spite of the fact that he had suffered a massive stroke and vanished from public view.

The Stroger family insisted that he was totally running the show, he was just staying sequestered because he's a private kind of guy. Then he finally resigned and the local machine muscled his son Todd into the spot. Followed that so far? Dad ran for the primary election (while vegetative) and won, now he's been swapped out for his son.

Last night, after I had gone to sleep, Republican challenger Tony Peraica and his supporters went to the Cook County Administration Building to demand ballot integrity. Cook County Clerk David Orr, who is apparently in charge of the whole shebang, continued to insist that the ballots were protected by cops. The Sun Times picks it up here:

Orr emerged from his office to say "hooligans" were trying to break into boxes with election cartridges inside.

"Drunks or whoever, they were trying to block people from bringing them up," Orr said. "And the freight elevator was broken."

Still, Orr said the integrity of the election hadn't been compromised.

Media cameras captured boxes being ripped open by unknown people, and others lying over the boxes to protect them. One man was arrested for allegedly damaging the elevator.

"It's just absolute anarchy over here," Peraica spokesman Dan Proft said. "We just saw a box coming in that was open . . . it's just been chaos."

Cook County officials said all of the ballot materials had been accounted for.

Peraica urged his supporters to leave the election night party at the Hotel Intercontinental and march about a mile to the building at 69 W. Washington.

Once they arrived, a Stroger campaign volunteer was seen briefly wedging himself into the revolving door. Eventually, most supporters were allowed in, and Peraica and six supporters met with Orr, along with seven Stroger supporters.

"I smell a rat here," Peraica said, citing $60 million in upgrades county taxpayers funded to improve voting equipment since a similar debacle in the March primary.

Peraica's venomous response was a stark contrast to Stroger's reaction. Stroger, a Democrat, giggled as he told supporters he was going to bed for the night and would wake up today "just like Christmas" and celebrate.

Recently I watched the documentary The Last Man Standing about a 2002 race in Texas where cute Democrat Patrick Rose defeated incumbent and self-described "right wing nut" Rick Green in a race for a seat in the state legislature.

Today, the right wing nut tried to beat up his former opponent outside their polling place in the dreadfully named community Dripping Springs. From the Austin American Statesman:

A witness said Rick Green shoved and then punched state Rep. Patrick Rose, D-Dripping Springs, while both stood outside a polling place this morning at Sunset Canyon Baptist Church east of Dripping Springs.

"Patrick Rose looked like he was trying to get away and then a bunch of men came over and pulled Rick Green off," the witness said. "He continued trying to go after him and kept shouting 'You need to stop lying' and 'Let him defend himself, the big baby.' "

I should really pace myself so that I don't totally over-nerd myself too early in the day. However, dorky though this is, I am kind of proud that Jack Shafer at Slate used my tip (and my name) in his story about Lame Election-Day Journalism.

From today's Washington Post:

Then there's the Republican manual for its poll watchers in Maryland. The tone of the GOP message ("Your most important duty as a poll watcher is to challenge people who present themselves to vote but who are not authorized to vote") compares unfavorably with that of the Democrats to their poll watchers ("Your primary job is to ensure that every eligible voter who wants to vote gets to vote").

I know that normal people are sick of hearing about the mid-term elections, sick of the advertisements, sick of the commentary. I'm already a little sad that it will all be ending soon.

Unless, of course, it takes days or weeks to count all the ballots and dispute the counts which is entirely possible. Both parties have encouraged voters to vote early or vote absentee and most locations have rules saying that those ballots can't be counted until either election day or after the polls have closed on election day. So it could be a while.

My current, favorite story is about the woman who is running for asshole Tom DeLay's former seat, representing the folks of Sugarland, Texas. In order to vote for this candidate, voters will need to "write in" her name. However, the voting machines are electronic so there is no writing at all but rather rotating a dial and selecting the letters one at a time, like using an old-fashioned label maker.

Her last name? Sekula-Gibbs.

Chicagoist pointed me towards a favorable review of Chicago from an English newspaper Leeds Today. The writer hangs out at the Tall Ships Festival and is surprised that it's not overrun with tourists.

The tall-ships festival's organiser explained to me that the event was not primarily designed to please tourists. All Chicago festivals (which happen more than daily, both downtown and in what they call the neighbourhoods) are aimed at the locals.

This, said the organiser, is because tourists, rather than having things laid on for them and therefore being expected to look pleased, prefer, in a no-pressure way, to join in amiably with what the locals would have been doing anyway.

This sounds exactly right. If a community decides to hold a Hoot N Holler Festival or a Miss Splenda Pageant or a Running of the Bulls or whatever, it's hard to imagine that it's targeted to the locals and that tourists are just joining in; those seem like a calculated plea for tourists.

Five years ago I had some itchy skin on my back. I went to a dermatologist who had a prominent Yellow Pages ad and who would see me quickly.

According to Dr. Cornbleet, I had eczema, some ointment would take care of it, and every now and again I've gone back to get a refill of my prescription. An old school office with samples of nautical knot tying on the walls. No electronic records but a little box of index file cards with a card for each patient. I never got a bill, never paid a co-pay, never saw anything on the statements from my insurance company. Dr. Cornbleet himself did it all, answering the phone, consulting the little cards, making the diagnoses, all of it.

This morning they are having a pledge drive on public radio so I have the TV on which is how I came to learn that Dr. Cornbleet was found bound, gagged and stabbed to death in his office last night.

I was in class this afternoon in a building located at 624 South Wabash. The building at 630 South Wabash caught on fire.

Not to sound like a dick about it but it wasn't very exciting. We were evacuated (calmly) and I saw the billowing, gray smoke. Traffic was orderly. I stopped by the library, checked out some books and got on the El. The El was too crowded for me to have a seat.

That was my disaster experience.

Seattle now has an unbelievably dumb slogan as befits its prominent position in the equally dumbly be-sloganed Washington State. Thanks to Josh for bringing this to my attention.

The entire mac/apple product line annoys the hell out of me. I have been using iTunes as a podcatcher (for my non-apple mp3 player) and I downloaded the latest version. Now featuring less functionality! So instead of files automatically going into a library I had to create a new folder, copy files into that folder (and there is no visual to indicate that this is happening, you just have to check and see if it happened and it doesn't care if it makes duplicates.) This was all after consulting the not-at-all helpful Help menu; I finally just resorted to making shit up and this particular shit seems to be working.

I get that ALL software, all hardware, all electronic stuff in general has idiosyncracies. And I get that part of this is actually my fault and not the machine's fault. But what annoys me is the smug Apple acolyte approach of "it's wonderful and the only reason anyone thinks otherwise is because they've been ruined by exposure to PCs." This is like the hipster version of "God said it, I believe it, that settles it," found on so many bumper stickers in my youth.

I don't know that I believe in omens but I saw three dead birds on different sidewalks yesterday which was gross and creepy.

On a happier omen-front, I was walking by the lake yesterday during lunch and saw an ordinary looking man riding a bike. The bike had a basket in front, the basket held a small dog and the dog was wearing a green afro wig.

Doonesbury used to have a character named Andy (died of AIDS) and now has one named Drew. Unfortunately it's a woman.
I'm just stalling when it comes to looking at the papers. Between the Woodward book and the Foley resignation I feel like it's Christmas morning.

Slate has been discussing Zach Braff:

It makes sense that Braff is so popular on MySpace, a site that exists so people can list what they like—friends, celebrities, music, movies. Braff is, essentially, an aggregator. His soundtracks are lists of his favorite songs. Garden State was a list of funny anecdotes and off-kilter objects rather than a cohesive story. He might not have anything original to say, but Braff does offer this insight on our generation: We are inclined to mistake stuff for substance.

I'm a good bit older than Braff but I'm inclined to agree when writer Josh Levin concludes:

If Zach Braff is the voice of my generation, can't someone please crush his larynx?

The NYT is running a story today about cultural conservatives:

In a Madonna concert and Veggie Tales, critics see a double standard.

Yes, you have to get up pretty early to fool those cultural conservatives.

False alarm. Although tanks are indeed in the streets of Bangkok, my brother is fine.
According to his email, he was too busy fighting with his new annecdote to notice the coup.

My brother is in Bangkok now so I'm a little freaked out about this story that the Associated Press is running:

The Thai military launched a coup against Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on Tuesday night, circling his offices with tanks, seizing control of TV stations and declaring a provisional authority pledging loyalty to the king.

Are you a narcissist? Why not take a quiz and find out?

Doing a lousy job of posting lately; sorry.

I realize diction is tricky on this one but it did seem as though a lot of people on the news yesterday were remembering the "whores" of 9/11.

I am totally fascinated by Bento TV. It's a woman who shows various Japanese lunchboxes and recipes to fill them. While she and the video production are amateurs, she's incredibly professional. She is apparently reading from cue cards or has totally memorized each little presentation.

Now I totally want a wee multi-compartment lunchbox with a little cylinder to hold my damp towel (for finger washing purposes). Such is the power of suggestion in a video blog.

The New York Times has just hired its first perfume critic.

"Perfume is an art form just like other art forms from theatre to painting to music, so we're excited to be the first to cover perfume in this way," Diane McNulty, a Times spokesperson, said.

Burr's column, Scent Strip, in the paper's style section, will assess old and new perfumes for men and women as well as the occasional scented candle, and rate them from zero stars to four stars.

This is one weird beat.

It's the end of August, 2006 so you know what that means. It means that we are about to hear a fucking ton of news stories about the 1 year anniversary of Katrina and the 5 year anniversary of 9/11. Mixed into both of these stories will no doubt be plenty of assertions that the authorities, in fact, did awesome jobs and it is simply a failure of communication that causes the public to think otherwise.

"Failure of communication" is such a seductive idea. It glosses over whatever the real problem is ("we are incompetent and overly self-interested") while suggesting a painless solution ("we need to get out in front of this thing and tell our side of the story")

Which brings us to the Chicago Public Schools, where only about 5% of the student population is reading at grade level. What's the solution? Apparently it involves eliminating over 100 teaching positions, eliminating classes at both the advanced and special education ends of the spectrum, and hiring a video production company for $575,000 to make 20 half-hour programs for local cable that talk about how Chicago Public Schools are not sucky but, in fact, awesome.

The trib has the details:

"Ultimately we have to make choices about what's important," said Peter Cunningham, director of external affairs, who made the decision to hire an outside video production company instead of having the district's own five-person video staff handle the work. "We believe communicating to parents about what's happening in the district is important."

and

Cunningham said he has no way of knowing how many people actually watch the cable show, but he believes it's another way to reach parents who might not read newspapers or use the Internet.

Right! All those parents who don't read the non-existent stories in the newspapers or the Internet about the high quality of Chicago Public Schools are, if you think about it, an underserved population. They need a TV show! Because otherwise their actual, real world experience of having children enrolled in public schools might lead them to the assumption that the schools suck.

Kelefa Sanneh, who always delivers funny, smart writing in the NYT, has this observation about contemporary pop music:

If you’ve been watching many of the post-“Idol” musical reality shows, you might have noticed that most of these putative amateurs behave an awful lot like old pros. Don’t worry. There are still a few naïve musical dreamers, rushing in where angels fear to tread. You just have to know where to look.

Those naïve musical dreamers are, turns out, Paris Hilton and K-Fed, he of the much You Tubed Teen Choice Awards debacle.

Mr. Federline can afford to set his own agenda; he seems to be rapping mainly because there’s no one who can stop him. So there he was, jumping up from the piano bench, throwing on a white cap and clumsily insisting, “The lifestyle, the rich living, the fast cars/Don’t hate ’cause I’m a superstar.” No doubt the 11-year-old haters in the crowd took notice.

Having my picture taken is one of my least favorite things in the world. I came across a site that gave tips to photographers for coping with people like me, based on the logic that if we actually like pictures of ourselves, we are more likely to pay for them.

Here's the most interesting tip--instead of "say cheese!" instruct the subject to squeeze his butt cheeks together. The result is a natural smile at such a goofy request and the overall affect is one of happy, curious expectation rather than forced pleasantness.

Went to my 1st gay wedding last night. There was a reading from The House at Pooh Corner and a mariachi band so quite the multi-faceted experience.

A vitally important blog update:
I had earlier bemoaned the lack of YouTube videos that demonstrated the dance local kids call The Wild 40's.
It turns out those elsewhere call it The Chicken Noodle Soup (or some such variation.)
You may now return to getting wiggly with it.

Best thing about latest round of terror hoo-ha?
Sucks up all the oxygen that would otherwise be devoted to talking heads discussing Alaskan oil pipeline woes.

This morning there is no "Morning Edition" on NPR but rather a press conference talking about the UK terrorists plot that was thwarted.

First of all, I'm annoyed that this is on instead of the news. Secondly, I can't help but see the hand of Rove everywhere, including here.

Partly because it's getting close to an election and terrorism is one of the few things that Republicans still get credit for doing well.

And partly because they let Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, babble on and on for so long. We are approaching the 1-year anniversary of Katrina and it seems like someone's idea to show him being decisive and protective. Ugh.

It's a million fucking degrees here (here in Chicago not here in my apartment where there is air conditioning and iced hibiscus tea) and I am not at the Pitchfork Music Festival.

It was a last minute thing, I got a set of comps for the festival on Friday morning. Yesterday, while running errands in the heat I realized that there was no way I was going to anything outdoors, at all, even though Diplo is spinning. So while in Trader Joe's I went to the customer service desk and told the manager that I had passes, I'm not using them, and would he please give them to somebody on staff?

Instead I saw an awesome movie and made chili.

I don't know that I would actually use this but I love the concept. It's a program called BillMonk and it tracks the things you have borrowed and the things others have borrowed from you.

Borrowing is awkward because people forget, notes the site, urging me to click on a friend's name for details.

When you drill-down for details about a particular friend, you see the money transactions between the two of you, as well as the stuff that you are borrowing and have loaned out .

You owe Bob for gas and the cable bill, and he owes you for lunch. We do the math to find the balance: $30.50.

And for a spectacularly bad, very 1990's idea there is Dinner in the Sky. A big-ass dining table is hoisted into the air on a crane and then you eat. To build your team or whatever.

I haven't done much in the way of predictions but here's one I'd like to make.

Remember in the mid-late 1990's there was that resurgence of swing music? It was kind of affected and seemed to be largely an upper middle class, white kind of activity, kind of a charming anachronism.

I just get the feeling that we are in for not a revival precisely but more like a re-birth. Not white kids aping the past but non-white kids who believe that they are inventing something new but which looks remarkably familiar.

There's a dance in Chicago now called Wild 40's. It's a wiggly leg move, similar to the Charlston (the dance's name references the decade, not malt liquor) and I can't find an example on YouTube. But kids here know Wild 40's just as much as they know how to dance the Lean With It, Rock With It.

If you watch the Ken Burns multi-part Jazz documentary, well, bless your heart, but there is some fantastic dance footage. And it shows how swing dance is not just partnered, jitterbug-style dancing but full of individual footwork and expression. Footwork and expression that looks remarkably like contemporary clown walks.

Between the new Christina Aguilera single and the upcoming Outkast movie, it's swinging.

You know how it is sometimes when you go for a while without saying anything, it gets even harder to say something when you do finally speak?

Maybe it's just me.

I'm eating a vietnamese sub after buying a new bike helmet. I'm riding bike with said helmet to the movies. I feel like every publication I read is obsessed with the long tail.

That's all for now.

My friend Katie read one of her essays on All Things Considered. Woo Hoo!

I saw this poster in a store window today:

Changes: A Science-Fiction Tap Opera featuring the music of David Bowie

according to the press release:
The story of Changes is grounded in science fiction, with the starting point being Bowie’s seminal work Ground Control to Major Tom. From there the story moves to an alien planet ruled by an egotistical leader who forces the populace to work for his own glorification. Unlike some dance works, which count on the audience to apply their own meaning to what can seem quite abstract at times, Chicago Tap Theater strives to present fairly clear narratives while still leaving some room for the audience to interpret.

Yesterday I saw a T-shirt on Michigan Avenue with a large fish, much like those favored by Christians who stick the logo on their bumpers. The shirt read, "Jesus Got R Done" in large, emphatic letters.

Nicholas Minucci, 20 years old, is going to jail and he could be in there for the next 25 years. I'm glad of that.

Last year Minucci, who is white, used a baseball bat to rob Glen Moore, who is black. Moore was walking with friends through Howard Beach, the neighborhood that saw horrifying white-on-black violence in the 1980s. Minucci stole the Air Jordans, Polo Shirt and Prada shoes that Moore was carrying and beat Moore with the bat while using what the attorneys referred to as "the N word."

As far as I can tell, no one is disputing the baseball/robbery part (although the defense argued that Minucci was concerned about auto theft in the neighborhood and was making a sort of vigilante style Citizen's Arrest.) The real concern in the trial is that N word.

If someone spraypaints "I hate you!" on the side of my property, he's a vandal. But if he paints, "I hate you, you faggot." then he has committed a hate crime and the penalties are greater.

From today's NYT:

Mr. Minucci's lawyer, Albert Gaudelli, argued vociferously during the trial that Mr. Minucci meant the word not as a slur but as a benign form of address commonly used today among young people of various ethnicities.

For the sake of argument, let's just agree that yes, lots of folks do call one another Nigga and they don't intend it as a slur. I myself find it distasteful and don't say it but I understand the phenomenon.

But it does seem that hitting someone with an aluminum bat while robbing him kind of mitigates that "benign form of address" notion, no?

Today I arrived at the Punk Planet offices to find Issue #74 back from the printers with my story on the cover.

It's a beautiful day, sunshine with a lot of wind, and Anne brought a dollar-store kite to the office. All of us went on top of our building to take turns flying the plastic illustration of what was either a unicorn with rainbow wings or a rainbow-winged pegasus with a horn on its forehead. Anne christened it "Lollipop." We unrolled almost the entire spool of string and managed to land Lollipop with no problems.

After work I bought a handsome thermos to replace my unattractive and broken one, and went for a jog at the track near my house. The track surrounds a field on which a group of men were playing soccer shirts vs. skins.

6/6/06? Fucking rocks, dude.

I just finished reading the new Joe Klein book "Politics Lost" about how politicians get totally focus-grouped and turn into tiresome automatons who alienate the public.

Which brings me to the Katherine Harris run for Senate in Florida. Katherine Harris, you may recall, was the partisan hack who wore too much makeup throughout all of the 2000 ballot recount and later compared herself to Rosa Parks. Her race is thusfar a disaster and no signs that it will turn around before November.

My favorite line from a USA Today story about the dreadful-though-admittedly-un-focus-grouped candidate is this:
Harris likes tight clothing. Jim Dornan, her former campaign manager, compares it to debutante attire. It's not the type of dress a U.S. senator should or would wear, he says.
She wore a tight peach sweater to Red Belly Day, a festival named for a local fish, and sucked on a lollipop.
"Oh, no," aide Brian Brooks said as a photographer snapped pictures.

I think that Diversity Beans are an especially stupid idea. Six colors of jelly beans, six flavors but the flavors and the colors don't correspond. So you might THINK that a red jelly bean might be cherry but it could be lime or licorice! See?

Obviously the message is "don't judge by appearances." But is that, in fact, the real message of diversity? This seems like a deeply weird metaphor. "Diversity means you could always be unpleasantly surprised or disappointed. Enjoy!"

I guess I'm not convinced that the problem is judging by appearances ("She looks like a lesbian") but rather the difficulties that follow that categorization ("Lesbians only want to talk about fast pitch softball, better avoid her")

How to get people to address the actual person, not the category, that seems like the challenge. And I don't see any candy beans available to fix that one.

A photograph to support the idea: Seattle is a silly place. For those who are unfamiliar with the city, The Cuff is a leather bar although, for this illustration, that just makes things more confusing rather than more clear.

Waiting for my rice to finish cooking and listened to an interview with football player Ricky Williams. He can't play for the NFL anymore due to various drug issues (that's ganja, not steroids) so he's playing in the CFL for the Toronto Argonauts.

People who actually give a shit about football already know that Williams is famous for being shy and soft-spoken. I came away from the interview thinking that this guy isn't kidding when he says that he just wants to play football, not engage in all of the hoopla that goes with the NFL.

And glad that I have an Argo jersey...

Cool story in today's NYT about the popularity of the name Nevaeh for little girls. Here's the lead:

Chances are you don't have any friends named Nevaeh. Chances are today's toddlers will.

In 1999, there were only eight newborn American girls named Nevaeh. Last year, it was the 70th-most-popular name for baby girls, ahead of Sara, Vanessa and Amanda.

"Nevaeh" is "Heaven" spelled backwards and this trend is attributed entirely to Sonny Sandoval of P.O.D. who appeared on MTV in 2000 with his little girl, thusly named.

The headline for this story asks "And If it's a Boy, Will it be Lleh?"

Here's a cool interactive graphing doo-dad that shows the relative popularity of various names. "Drew" is still more popular amongst boys than girls which a more secure person would not find notable.

On a grocery run this evening was listening to the local Hip Hop & RnB station for the top 9 at 9. I had stopped listening for a while because "I'm In Love With a Stripper" continued to be #1 and I'm just not interested.

Music-wise, nothing exciting tonight. But on the general pop-culture, decline-of-society tip, I was horrified to hear the new KFC ads. This is part of the new rebranding strategy, I guess. The background music is a techno-lite reworking of "Sweet Home Alabama" while the announcer touts the new KFC Mashed Potato Bowls! A Mashed Potato Bowl! is chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and three cheeses all in one. Here's a visual. This, of course, is the sexiest possible, food-stylist enhanced version. I didn't catch the announcer mentioning corn although there sure seems to be some in this bowl.

Let's assume, for the moment, that this particular combination of foods all nestled together in a single container tested well in focus groups. Not my kind of thing but the groups loved it. Is the beginning of summer the most strategic time of year to introduce this? When it's hot and humid do people crave a bowl of potatoes and gravy and a bunch of other shit?

Perhaps it is the same people who made "I'm In Love With a Stripper" such a chart topper, perhaps it is these folks who find that such a bowl scratches an itch. After a full day at the beach, only one thing will do! KFC Mashed Potato Bowls! (cue sexy whooping noises)

A story on the radio today about L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The novel grew out of stories he told his own children and neighbor children when living in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood.

Maybe you have to know Chicago to understand this. It's like hearing that The Cat in the Hat came out of Theodor Geisel telling rhymes to kids in South Central Los Angeles. Of course Humboldt then and now are different things but still...

Humboldt Park isn't the most hood of Chicago's hoods but it's no place to fuck around. I was at the Puerto Rican Pride festival there a few summers ago. The sun was starting to go down and I went to where my bike was locked up to find a pit bull, dead and bloody, lying on a flattened piece of cardboard next to the bike rack.

Definitely one of my top 5 horrifying Chicago moments--right there in Humboldt Park. So that would make me, what, the lion then?

I just finished transcribing my interview with Boots Riley of The Coup. One of my favorite bands just released what has become one of my favorite albums. Sometimes journalism is the best thing in the world.

My landlord was outside today bashing up pieces of concrete. The goal was chunks of gravel and Joe tends to find the most labor-intensive route to any goal so that's how it manifested today.

His young son, Odin, was outside watching.

"Okay I'm going to swing the hammer, you need to stand back," Joe said.

"Could that hammer hurt my foot?" Odin asked.

"Yes, it could hurt you very badly."

"Could it kill me?"

"No it couldn't kill you."

"Oh," he said, disappointed.

Big-ass immigrant rights rally in Chicago yesterday and I feel a renewed sense of pride about being an American and being in Chicago. The conservative estimate is 400,000 marchers while organizers claim 700,000 but no matter...it was a lot of people with no arrests and no stress. When I was downtown I saw everyone literally draped in flags, little kids eating ice cream.

Chicago is not at all touchy-feely when it comes to matters multi-cultural. In the summer there are parades and festivals by every group and these prompt much eye rolling by non-members. "There go the fucking Puerto Ricans/Polacks/Fags/etc. etc." The deal seems to be You get your parade, I get to sneer at it and you.

You'll never be able to make a heartwarming tv ad out of that but, all things considered, it's not a terrible way to be. What I take away from this is that residents aren't going to feign good will so if there IS good will, you can feel confident that it is sincere.

Which is why I found this passage from the Trib so moving:

On the way to Grant Park, the dominant chant was "si se puede" (yes, it can be done). No matter their apparent background, participants raised the Spanish chant to support their Latino comrades.

Serigne Diop, 40, led a group of Mexicans in the chant. "I studied Spanish in college," the Senegalese immigrant said with a smile.

Brian Smith and Zack Wicks, both 15-year-old students from Francis Parker School, turned "si se puede" into a modified rap.

A busload of Koreans and Filipinos riding to the march broke into the chant, banging a traditional Korean cymbal-like instrument for punctuation. And Roger Brewin, a British immigrant, joined in the chant as he marched through the Loop. "I am an immigrant. These are my people," he explained.

The power of naming. This is me. Or this is what I'm striving for, anyway.

George Ryan, our most recently ex-governor, was convicted of all 3,217 charges against him and could possibly spend the rest of his life in prison.

If you are really interested in the case itself, there's plenty of information online but I want to point you to the direction of the band that named itself after Ryan's statewide infrastructure initiative--Illinois First. If you named your band "Shock and Awe" or "No Child Left Behind" that would at least have some uuuummmph to it.

I should point out that the band has an accordian. They're cool.

The band has a song called "George Ryan". Here's a sample of the lyrics:

Now I'm a dyed in the wool Democrat
But there's a man from Kankakee who really knows where it's at
He's with the Grand Old Party, but that doesn't make him a fascist
He's got progressive politics that put him at the top of my hip list

Illinois First also does an impressive number about Rock Island (you know, one of the four communities that make up the Quad Cities along with Moline, Davenport and Bettendorf--Rock Island, dude!) with the lyrics:

They stored ammunition in Rock Island During World War I
During World War II, they also made a lot of guns
Visit the Rock Island Arsenal Museum if you wanna have some fun

I'm gonna take you down to Rock Island, it's a rock and roll paradise
Rock Island, and you know I'm gonna treat you nice

Insert your joke here. From MSNBC via Wonkette:

Bush called for a criminal investigation to ‘get to the bottom’ of the CIA leak scandal. It turns out he may be the bottom. By Eleanor Clift

I didn't get in on all the Bush-Assists-With-Leak tittering so now I'm back in the game.

I'm getting a weird batch of spam lately that is all in the same, oddly poetic, english-as-a-second-language style. My favorite phrases:

-Priority penis rouse!
-Grandiose teen doing charming blowjob!

This quote was on the same page as the Chabon essay I've blogged below:

“Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation's laws.” S.J. Perelman

It seems lazy to take two things from one source but on this day of Tom DeLay's resignation, I couldn't resist.

I came across this essay by Michael Chabon. He's writing about MFA programs but it seems that there are larger applications, no?

We are accustomed to repeating the cliche, and to believing, that “our most precious resource is our children.” But we have plenty of children to go around, God knows, and as with Doritos, we can always make more. The true scarcity we face is of practicing adults, of people who know how marginal, how fragile, how finite their lives and their stories and their ambitions really are, but who find value in this knowledge, and even a sense of strange comfort, because they know their condition is universal, is shared.

You scored as Either. You brain is neither specifically male nor female dominated in the way you perceive things and as bad as this sounds it can easily mean that you are capable of combining both limiting gender aspects to your advantage. Rather than being genderless you are possibly able think freely. This does not nec. mean that you are bisexual or androgynous or indecisive, though it might. (If you want me to reply to any issues you have with test I can only do so by leaving me your E-Mail address) Either 64% Male 57% Neither 43% Female 36% Should you be MALE or FEMALE?* created with QuizFarm.com

It's spring break and I'm in Toronto (headline from NYT travel section, "A Revitalized Toronto Pins Its Hopes on the Hobbits" meaning the new musical based on Lord of the Rings which opens here tomorrow night.)

Alex is at work now and he has thoughtfully collected a few local Filipino newspapers for me to peruse. I've been studying the Philippines for a class in Social/Cultural Geography.

I'm not going to get into all of the political stuff but it's important to know that the president in the Philippines, while ostensibly elected, only really serves at the pleasure of the upper class and the military. If the president is well-liked by those groups, then mass protests will be quelled. If, however, the president has pissed off the wealthy and the military, then the mass protests are allowed to continue and the military says, in effect, "Hey president, good luck with that uprising. You're on your own." Liked or loathed, the mass protests seem to be part of the deal.

Anyway, the Philippines are considering changing their government from a presidential system to a parliamentary system. I'm not really sure how all that works but it does give an opportunity for lots of fun abbreviations and general verbal playfulness.

The switch in constituion requires a charter change, abbreviated everywhere as cha-cha. One group of officials supports a constitutional convention, or con-con, while another thinks that an assembly is appropriate, a con-ass.

Right now this is more exciting to me than the boring-ass primary election that Illinois held yesterday.

This sounds like my experience with conservatives. From William Saletan in today's SLATE:

A longitudinal study suggests whiny kids grow up to be conservative. They "turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity. The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests." The authors suspect "insecure kids look for the reassurance provided by tradition and authority," whereas "the more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives." This matches a 2003 analysis that suggested "people who are dogmatic, fearful, [and] intolerant of ambiguity … are more likely to gravitate to conservatism."

Saletan takes issue with some of the methodology...you can read his reservations in the original if you want. It's my blog and I'll edit selectively if I want to...

The NYT directed me to check out The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project, maintained by UC Santa Barbara. Way, way back in the day records were not flat platters but rather rotating cylinders. The good folks in Santa Barbara have digitized a bunch of these and you can listen to them streaming online or download them.

Lots of xylophones and banjos, lots of polkas and rags. And slurs, there's lots of those.

The site includes an admirable disclaimer about the popularity of "ethnic" songs at the turn of the last century and indicates that this terminology has not been sanitized from the original.

I tried searching for "pansy," "queer," "fairy," and "sissy." No luck. I'm not sure if this means that there aren't any such songs or that I don't have the correct terminology.

Terminology is a tough one. For instance, if you had to guess what the word was for minstrel songs, you might guess "race" or "negro" or even "colored." Fortunately the disclaimer points the way; unfortuantely the way is the word "coon."

97 results come up for "coon" including "That Welcome on the Mat Ain't for Me," "Everloving Spoonie Sam," and "Celebrating Day in Tennessee." I clicked on that last one, which the notes point out is described on the original sleeve as a "coon duet." One verse asks, "Why is every darky/feelin' kind of sparky?"

The site gives some weird insight into the state of both race relations and popular music back in the early 1900's. There are almost as many results for Irish--80-- as for coon. One song offers the helpful hint, "It Takes the Irish to Beat the Dutch."

No luck searching for "Jew," "Jewish," or "Hebrew," but I got 19 results with "Rabbi" including "Under the Matzos Tree," and "I'm a Yiddish Cowboy."

The site mentions that these cylinders cost $5 back in 1900, about $110 in today's dollars. So one must have had some especially strong feelings about those groups to shell out that kind of cash.

The links page suggests other sites, including the Canadian Virtual Gramophone, which is hardly free from slurs.

I'm totally into WikiHow "The How-to Manual That Anyone Can Write Or Edit"

Clearly I could spend all morning here if I'm not careful. How to Become Gothic, How to Stop Being Viewed as a Nerd ("Buy a track jacket. Any color. This is ideally worn over any regular t-shirt, making any outfit hip."), How to Figure the Cost of Running Buses to Your Protest, How to Paint an Ice Rink, How to Get a Pot-Bellied Pig to Take Antibiotics...

Seriously, I'm stopping now.

Chicago public high schools require all sophomores to take (and pass) a driver's ed course.

Including students who are blind.

This has been going on for some time now. A mentor program that pairs blind adults with blind teenagers asked the kids what they would like to see changed--the point was to teach political activism. And the kids all mentioned that they were required to take Driver's Ed.

Chicago doesn't offer simulators or behind the wheel training; the classes are videos and booklets (that aren't translated into braille or anything).

The Trib notes:

For Teniya Booker, 17, who lost her sight after she was shot at age 3, the class proved to be one more struggle in an already challenging class load. "Why should we have to memorize how a street sign looks when we are never going to see them while driving?" Booker wrote in a letter to Ald. Howard Brookins Jr. (21st).

My favorite part of the story is this:

One teacher argued that the lessons aren't a waste of time."I don't think you can ever get enough traffic safety ... and we do a lot on how to make good decisions," said Brent Johnston, a Hinsdale South High School teacher and a chairman of the Illinois High School/College Driver's Education Association. "Still, this shouldn't be the school's decision; it should be mom and dad's decision. A little common sense would go a long way."

I'm really glad I lived in Seattle and there are days when I miss it terribly. There are also days when I remember that it got on my nerves.

Seattle has lots of cool parks, one called Gas Works. It's an old coal gassification plant by the lakefront. After cleaning the soil, the city turned it into a park in the mid-70's. Some of the old equipment remains for folks to climb on and there is a huge hill in the middle, good for flying kites. It's a very Seattle kind of thing, repurposing something gross into something delightful.

A concert series was to take place at Gas Works this summer but it's been canceled. Seattlest picks it up here:

The move comes after a group calling themselves Friends of Gas Works Park, but who we call a bunch of hippie assholes, claimed that the concerts would bring crowds, traffic and parking problems to the area. Boo-fucking-hoo.

If you live in a major city, events which draw a large number of people are going to occur. We agree that the public should have ample time to comment on city proposals and that secret deals are not a way to make public decisions; however, shooting down ideas because, "I'll have nowhere to park my Subaru," and "I may have to walk around people when I take my golden retriever out," is annoying.

Indeed. Seattle does often operate under the idea that everything can and should be controlled, as befits a city where engineering-related tasks have flourished.

No one believes me when I say that the dog parks in Seattle post signs that say, amongst other rules, that excessive barking is not allowed, but here's a link. The rule on barking is in the third of 14 (!) rules shown here.

There's a story about Gene Simmons of KISS in today's LA Times. I'm easy when it comes to Kiss stories and I ignored the rest of the news to read the entire three page "Outrageous Entrepreneur" story. At the end there is a little bio with the usual facts one might expect (former schoolteacher, sold a bunch of records, appeared on "Miami Vice," etc.) but there was one fact that stood out for me:

...briefly managed Liza Minnelli's recording career

It's not quite the same as independent confirmation but GeneSimmons.com does include the Liza detail (also that he discovered Van Halen which seems way more plausible.)

The Gene Simmons site has the bio, the discography, the links that take you to, among other things, this listing of reviews/pics of Kiss Expos held recently in Louisville and Indianapolis. There is also a feature called "Ladies in Waiting." These are like little personal ads that are meant just for Gene. Here's Lilly who poses in an American Flag bikini:

Hi! I am outgoing,passionate,and wild(sometimes):)The reason I want to be a Lady in waiting will be to get more exposure,of course,and because I actualy Am a Lady in waiting.......Waiting to pursue my dreams!!!!!!!!!!!

Between the Ladies in Waiting and the pics of Kiss conventioneers at a Q&A with Peter Criss, I have to say that GeneSimmons.com is incredibly depressing.

An interesting idea from Christopher Caldwell in today's New York Times Magazine. Manassas, Va., passed some laws about what "family" means. This time it's not about sexuality but rather real estate. To wit, lots of folks living in a "single family home":

Whereas the old code defined "family" as pretty much any group of people related by blood or marriage, the new definition limited it to immediate relatives of the homeowner. Parents, children and siblings were family; uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews were not.

Which means that Alex's household is not a family, at least as far as Manassas is concerned (fortunately Scarborough has a remarkably relaxed view about families.) But back to Caldwell and Virginia:

For decades, the family has been at the center of America's culture wars. The traditionalist side takes the family for something natural, self-evident and unchanging, with certain absolute rights that no government can violate. The reformist side holds that the family is a "social construct" that is destined to change as individuals make choices and governments pass laws that reflect new mores.

But look now. The traditionalists are hoist with their own petard. When the real desiderata of American life — convenient parking and garbage-free sidewalks — are at stake, Joe Sixpack is as willing to meddle with the traditional family as are Heather's Two Mommies. And sheltering distant relatives in various kinds of trouble — the laid-off, the dropped-out, the pregnant — is what American (extended) families have always been for.

Whether we think the purpose of families is producing babies, fostering love, tending the aged or protecting chastity, they have one thing in common. They are organized to address concrete problems, not to dispense utopian malarkey. Governments can kick problems down the road in a way that families cannot — whether the problem is a husband drinking his wages away or housing prices that have lost their apparent logical relation to hourly pay. The immigrants in Manassas are behaving like families in this sense. They are adapting their city's "single-family" housing stock to the realities of the labor market — with an indifference to government say-so that used to be called Yankee ingenuity.

Manassas overturned the law, by the way.

I've been reading "The Natural," a book by Joe Klein about the Clinton presidency and he quotes Leon Panetta describing the southern courtliness of Clinton. "He never came out and told someone they were full of shit even though I know he was thinking it."

That's not a bad thumbnail description of southern cultural behavior where famously "bless your heart," can be kindness but probably is a fig leaf to disguise cruelty. "She's so ugly, bless her heart." It trips me up sometimes, that courtliness. It's confusing to others as well and I can see how someone might mistake "politeness" for, say, "interested."

Cultural difference can be a pain in the ass, no two ways about it. Why can't we all just get along? Sometimes it's because we can't understand why you or, even better, you people act that way.

Bringing me to what seems like journalistic genius AND a welcome service, Ask a Mexican from the Orange County Weekly, written by Gustavo Arellano.

From today's Los Angeles Times:

The column, published in 2004, was meant as a one-time spoof, but questions began pouring in. Why are there so many elaborate wrought-iron fences in the Mexican parts of town? What part of the word "illegal" do Mexicans not understand? Why do Mexicans pronounce "shower" as "chower" but "chicken" as "shicken"? Arellano has responded each week, leading an unusually frank discussion on the intersections where broader society meets the largest and most visible national subgroup in the country: Mexicans.

Arellano, a 27-year-old reporter and fourth-generation Orange County resident, has taken his "Ask a Mexican" personality to radio and other print outlets. He has found receptive audiences in unlikely places, even conservative talk radio. "Ask a Mexican" is historically and culturally accurate, in some cases painfully so, while pushing the edges of modern political correctness.

At times, it can also sound like the work of a graduate student — which Arellano once was. His response to the "shicken" question included references to native Indian languages and linguapalatal fricatives.

But under it all, "Ask a Mexican" is imbued with affection for Mexican immigrants, which may explain its appeal among Mexican Americans who might otherwise take offense.

Dear Mexican,What's with the Mexican need to display the Virgin of Guadalupe everywhere? I've seen her in the oddest places, from a sweatshirt to a windshield sticker. As a Mexican, I find it a little offensive and tacky to display this religious symbol everywhere.

Dear Pocha,… I've seen her painted on murals, woven into fabulous silk shirts worn by Stetson-sporting hombres and — one holy night — in my bowl of guacamole. But while I share your disdain for the hypocrites who cross themselves in Her presence before they sin…. I don't find public displays of the Empress of the Americas offensive at all. Mexican Catholicism is sublime precisely because it doesn't draw a distinction between the sacred and the profane. We can display our saints as comfortably in a cathedral as we do on hubcaps.

Admit it. You may not have a question for A Mexican but you've got a question for somebody. Don't you wish you could ask?

How was my day? Why it was busy.

You name the question, "Busy" is the answer. Yes, yes, I know we are all terribly busy doing terribly important things. but I think more often than not, "Busy" is simply the most acceptable knee-jerk response.

Certainly there are more interesting, more original and more accurate ways to answer the question how are you? How about: I'm hungry for a waffle; I'm envious of my best friend; I'm annoyed by everything that's broken in my house; I'm itchy.

Yet busy stands as the easiest way of sumarizing all that you do and all that you are. I am busy is the short way of saying--suggesting--my time is filled, my phone does not stop ringing, and you (therefore) should think well of me.

As kids, our stock answer to most every question was nothing. What did you do at school today? Nothing. What's new? Nothing. Then, somewhere on the way to adulthood, we each took a 180-degree turn. We cashed in our nothing for busy.

I'm starting to think that, like youth, the word nothing is wasted on the young. Maybe we should try reintroducing it into our grown-up vernacular. Nothing. I say it a few times and I can feel myself becoming more quiet, decaffeinated. Nothing. Now I'm picturing emptiness, a white blanket, a couple ducks gliding on a still pond. Nothing. nothing. Nothing. How did we get so far from it?

from Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal who lives in Chicago and totally rocks. (the NYT published this piece in 1999 in case it looks familiar.)

Doing homework which means Looking For Procastination Facilitation.
If you are looking to kill a little time, take a look at the website for McDonald's India. This link shows the delicious looking McAloo Tikki.

Today was the first day of my internship. I mailed advertising rate cards which is intern-y and I played with Lucy, the Punk Planet dog. The Bird Machine shares space with Punk Planet and their dog is named Seth. He didn't feel like playing.

I came home with a big stack of back issues--they want me to write, so that's good.

We went to Hot Doug's--The Sausage Superstore for lunch. I wasn't psyched when this was announced. But I was totally wrong. Check it out. I had the Thai chicken sausage with sweet and sour sauce, pickled radish and roasted sesame seeds. Mmmm.

From today's New York Times, Malcolm Gladwell on politics and national identity:

"I hate to be this reductive, but an awful lot of my ideology, it's just Canadian. Canadians like small, modest things, right? We don't believe in boasting. We think the world is basically a good place. We're pretty optimistic. We think we ought to take care of each other. And it so happens that to be a Canadian in America is to seem quite radical."

Feels like a two-fer of sadness today what with the death of Coretta Scott King and the speedy swearing-in of Judge Alito. It's not enough to hustle him into robes so that he can be confirmed in the afternoon, attend the State of the Union in the evening but Trent Lott has to shoot his mouth off about how the only reason anyone could oppose Alito is partisanship.

John Powers talks about this entertainingly in his book Sore Winners, that it's not enough to simply emerge victorious; it's important to smush your opponents' noses in their defeat. Indeed. In writing about the 2000 Election, Powers says that he wasn't expecting Bush to have won and then notes that, in retrospect, since Gladiator won best picture that year, he should have read the zeitgeist a little more closely.

So then what are we to glean from this year's nominees for Best Picture? Brokeback Mountain, Munich, Good Night and Good Luck, Crash and Capote? Other than the fact that the liberal, homosexual agenda is obviously thriving (go zeitgeist! woo hoo!)

Enough of that. I had to order a book from Amazon for school and I am a total sucker for the little message that says, "Wait! Add just $8.91 to your order and it qualifies for free shipping!" The book I ordered to push my $ over the threshold was 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style by Matt Madden.

Here's the story, as transcribed by Bookslut:

A young man sits at his desk, hard at work on his laptop.

He stands up and folds the laptop down.

As he walks out of the room, he stops for a second.

“What time is it?” asks a voice.

“It’s 1:15,” he says.

The voice says “Thanks!”

He opens the fridge.

The young man then stares at the open fridge.

He thinks to himself: What the hell was I looking for, anyway?!


I should point out that these are cartoons. Madden experiments with not only cartooning styles (underground comix, political cartoon, superhero) and narrative styles (point of view, language, etc.) but with everything. 99 is a lot of variations and setting the bar so high forces innovative approaches (tell the story as an advertisement, as a tapestry, as a map.)

What if it happened in a different location? What if everything was the opposite (and what does "opposite" mean when applied to "everything")? What if it had different text? Different images?

It's tough to describe how charming this book is; the website offers a sliver that suggests the joy.

Chicago is getting a smoking ban this week for "public places." What's a public place? Well, it's not a restaurant or a tavern; they have until July 1, 2008. Furthermore, establishments that can demonstrate that they have a kickass air filtration system can continue to allow smoking. I'm assuming that "demonstrate" is code for "pay off the inspector" but whatever.

Also this week, the Marshall McGearty Tobacco Artisans Lounge is opening in Wicker Park. As far as I can tell, it's going to be like a brewpub for tobacco...they handroll swanky cigarettes and put them in a fancy box. According to the Sun Times, the place is like a coffee shop with WiFi, board games, sofas, a full bar, desserts and snacks. And deep pockets, the whole venture is underwritten by RJ Reynolds, whose research indicates that 20% of smokers have "a superpremium mindset" whatever the hell that is.

This seems like a fantastic idea, this swanky cigarette place. As someone who enjoys the occasional cigarette, yet would enjoy dancing or eating an omlette a lot more if there wasn't anyone smoking nearby, I think that people should be permitted to vice up SOMEPLACE without huddling near the parking meters. By flagging it as a Tobacco Artisans Lounge, it's a clear signal that there is going to be smoking and lots of it indoors (they claim to have one of those kickass air filtration systems) and if that grosses you out, there are certainly plenty of other places for you to go in the neighborhood.

If tobacco lounges blew up the way coffee shops did, little neighborhood places to sit on old, velvet furniture and smoke, well that sounds awesome.

I bought a sandwich for lunch today and I paid using a gift card for that chain of restaurants. I think the woman at the cash register was high. I say that partly because I used to operate the cash register while high at a restaurant where I once worked. And I say that partly because she stapled my receipt to the gift card, right through the magnetic stripe.

When I asked, "Just out of curiosity--why did you staple my receipt to my card?" she looked at me and said, "so you'll know the remaining balance on the card."

That eye contact, that's a giveaway too. "I'm acting like I have nothing to hide! I'm transparent! If I was stoned, would I be making eye contact with you?!?" was always a big part of getting high before clocking in.

I'm living my life differently now, one day at a time as they emphasize, and it's good every once in a while to be reminded of what it was like to try and seem sober.

Which brings me to the James Frey book scandal.

I was annoyed by James Frey when the book first came out because the interviews all mentioned that he has FTBSITTTD tattooed on his arm (the letters stand for "Fuck The Bull Shit It's Time To Throw Down" which is this weird sort of mullet-pretension.) Alex read the book and liked it very much. I haven't read it except for the parts I could see over strangers' shoulders on the El so I can't really speak to the book itself.

I remember Alex trying to explain to me that the message of the book is "Hang on." That's not his interpretation of the message, that's the message. Hang on. Which maybe seems incredibly moving in the context of the book, it didn't do anything for me when I heard it.

Seth Mnookin, who has written about his own experiences in getting off drugs, writes in today's Slate about the scandal over A Million Little Pieces and why the scandal is about more than whether or not someone did a little embellishing in his memoir.

Mnookin describes a passage from the book, one that has NOT been contested by any fact checkers. As a child, Frey had horrible ear infections which were never properly diagnosed. He literally spent the first two years of his life screaming in pain. As an adult, a counselor tells Frey, "If those screams went unheeded, whether consciously or unconsciously, they might have ignited a fairly profound sense of rage within you."

Frey goes on to declare:

I'm a victim of nothing but myself, just as I believe that most people with this so-called disease aren't victims of anything other than themselves. … I call it being responsible. I call it the acceptance of my own problems and my own weaknesses with honor and dignity. I call it getting better.

Mnookin says that this fear of seeming like a victim necessitated the fabrications in the story.

Based on all the evidence, it seems Frey's weird, macho fear of seeing himself as a "victim" led him to fabricate a life that was painful and extreme enough so as to explain the sadness and despair he felt. Instead of a crack-binging street fighter, ostracized by both his peers and society, the investigation indicates Frey was more likely a lonely, confused boy who may or may not have needed ear surgery as a child and felt distant from his parents and alienated from his peers. He drank too much, did some drugs, got nailed for a couple of DUIs and ended up, at age 23, in one of the country's most prestigious drug-and-alcohol treatment centers.

When Frey writes that, after one of his fictitious arrests, he hated himself, saw no future, and wanted to die, I believe him. I grew up in a well-off suburban household with loving parents and no clear traumas in my past. I was popular enough in high school, I joined the newspaper and acted in plays, and I got into a good college. I was also miserably, sometimes almost suicidally, depressed, and, from the age of 15, I was taking drugs and drinking almost every day.

Frey must have felt that his real, very scary, and very lonely feelings would have seemed weak if it was only preceded by standard-issue suburban teenage angst.

Okay, so Frey may have deluded himself into thinking that he was Courtney Love and he turned it into an entertaining book. So what? As Oprah said on Larry King, he's bringing a good message forward to people who need it, right? Mnookin again:

For nonaddicts, "Pieces" reinforces the still dangerously prevalent notion that it's easy to spot a drug addict or an alcoholic—they're the ones bleeding from holes in their cheeks or getting beaten down by the police or doing hard time with killers and rapists. For those struggling with their own substance-abuse issues, Pieces sends the message that unless you've reached the depths Frey describes, you don't have anything to worry about—you're a Fraud.

In building up a false bogeyman—the American recovery movement's supposed reliance on the notion of "victimhood"—Frey has set himself up as the one, truth-telling savior.

And if you do have a problem, you don't need to necessarily get treatment or look to others for support; all you need to do is "hold on."

FTBS indeed

I don't drink anymore so the game I've come up with for the Judge Alito confirmations is this:
Everytime someone says "Stare Decisis" you have to strip-search a minor.