Lots of folks in my neighborhood have closed in front porches to create sun rooms and two of them have made these rooms, with their big windows, into holiday displays.

Two creches...in one the baby Jesus is visited by a flock of glowing, plastic penguins who look like they are singing carols. In another we see Jesus, Mary and Joseph visited by the three wise men, an angel, and Winnie the Pooh.

God bless us, everyone.

Ended up riding the Chicago Transit Authority's Holiday Train completely by accident tonight. It was the train that came when I came out of the grocery store.

Here's some stats from the press release:

Decorated with 35,000 lights, the six-car train features a flat car in the middle that carries Santa and his reindeer. Car interiors are decked out with bows, garland, red and green lighting and hand poles wrapped to look like candy canes. The exterior is wrapped in a vinyl material depicting a holiday theme.

Yesterday the train derailed near the Sedgewick stop. The Chicago Tribune ran a story but their site requies you to register so here's a little cutting and pasting:

The Chicago Transit Authority's festive Holiday Train derailed Saturday evening with more than 100 passengers aboard, but nobody was injured.

Festooned with lights and Christmas figures, one of the middle cars of the four-car train derailed for unknown reasons on the Brown Line near the Sedgwick Street station, said CTA spokeswoman Kim Myles.

"It's a pretty popular attraction" in its 12th season, Myles said. Passengers evacuated safely, using a track-level footpath about 7:30 p.m.

"So were you on the train yesterday when it derailed?" I asked the elf who looked a lot like Missy Elliot.

"The train didn't derail," Merry Missy told me, "I don't know why they said that. I guess because they was on the ground and couldn't see what was happening."

A child began crying and Merry Missy said, "uh oh! Sugar! Sugar!" and ran towards the child with her bucket of candy canes.

Santa entered our car (Santa, unlike ordinary riders, is permitted to pass between cars) and the kids went pleasingly nuts. Santa had what looked like a real beard, fake whiteness though.

Up on Saturday morning, chugging espresso and Silk creamer, and listening to cable music. I have digital cable now and I still can't quite get into the habit of sitting in front of the tv and focusing on something but I am really liking having music. There are a ton of channels (hey Comcast? Who had the idea to put "Bluegrass" on the main music page?) and the playlists are different than what radio has. I like a lot of oldies, for instance, but the radio wants to play the same ones over and over again. I could go the rest of my life without hearing "Hang On Sloopy" again but oldies radio doesn't feel that way. But last night on "Golden Oldies" I heard Conway Twitty.

I had always heard that the rock star Conrad Birdie from the musical BYE BYE BIRDIE was based on Twitty not on Elvis as it might seem. Twitty indeed sounds like a poor man's Elvis, bluesy and pouty and not bad at all. And digital cable's got him!

Here's a cool MSNBC "Year in Photos" wrap up. There were wildfires this year, remember those? I had already forgotten.

sorry so underblogged

I just learned that Hinckley, as in the guy who tried to shoot Reagan, has been given the right to have unchaperoned visits with his parents.

Okay, why wasn't that one a slam-dunk "no"?

I quickly googled the judge-yep, he's a Clinton appointee.

Tell me THAT isn't gonna come up in the election next year.

Sigh.

Reading about a new book by Anthony Harkins called "Hillbilly: The Cultural History of an American Icon". This Boston Globe piece notes that

American popular culture has been queasily fascinated for over a century by Southern mountain folk and their "hillbilly otherness."

"Queasily fascinated". Yes, that's about right.

David Kodeski is getting his show ANOTHER LOUSY DAY made into a radio production (or rather, it has been made into a radio production and it's gonna be on NPR)

Kodeski does these remarkable performance pieces with found narrative, usually diaries. In this case he found the diaries of a woman living on the SW side of Chicago in the early 60's. It's like Bridget Jones for real...what she ate, who she flirted with, how the job is going. He has reproduced some of the entries on his blog. It's a little peculiar because he has "blogged up" the entries, linking to webpages which I think is a little unnecessary but I'm not much of a linker as you've no doubt noticed yourself.

So here's a shocker. You know that band from the 70's called WAR? "Spill The Wine", "Lowrider", "The Cisco Kid", "Me and Baby Brother" all those latino funk hits?

Turns out the band was black, not latino. From a fascinating story about the ways latinos are adopting and modifying hip hop culture in Houston.

Spent a small chunk of time yesterday searching for scholarship information on the web. I hadn't done much of that...I've got loans and that's it, pretty much, but I'd like to be more of a full-time student soon, less of an employee so I thought I should go that route. It looks like I might get some small chunks, $500 here and there but not enough to really FIX anything.

This makes sense but is still a little discouraging. Interestingly, I'm also reading a book now about con men that was published back in the 40's. Most of the cons are based on the idea that there are some folks who think they can get something for nothing. The cons are all based on some element of insider knowledge ("I have a way to learn the results of horse races before a bookie does!") and the mark buys in based on his feeling that he can exploit this "knowledge". I realized that I am primed for a con right now, eager for a quick answer to this financial question.

As a side note, in this 1940s book, the author writes "phone" with an apostrophe like this:

'phone

which is only interesting to me because I'm taking a copy editing class right now and this is a stylistic change...we no longer think of "telephone" as the real word and "phone" as a slangy shorthand. Nerdy, no?

Finally, here's a link to something creepy. Schools are getting rid of soap in washrooms because kids use it to be destructive. Ewwwww gross.

December now, and Tuesday. I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed with lots of things needing attention. My in-box is out of control and I need to sit down and get it sorted out. Because now I can only think about the things I'm not doing when I do anything and that's no good.

Tried installing PhotoShop this morning so I could look at a friend's attachment he sent in .psp form and got thwarted by the installation. Too early for this sort of endeavor, I think.

In Mass now, Worcester, for Thanksgiving. Typing on a Mac so that sucks although I convinced the goddamn machine to give me back my cd (not to actually PLAY it, mind you). But happy to have computer access and dsl at that.
We ate toasted ham and cheese on pumpernickel and watched OLD SCHOOL which I hadn't seen and totally enjoyed. Debbie and Andrew went to bed and I came in here.
About being here and being named Andrew. Debbie's longtime boyfriend and recent husband is Andrew but there is also a stop on the train line (the Alewife to Braintree line, and aren't those cool names?) called Andrew.

"Now entering Andrew!" says the intercom recording as you roll to a stop inside the station. Yes, lets!

Made brandied fruit last night. This is for my office's totemic presents. Last year I made chocolate ricotta and cherry-vanilla ricotta breads for those. And this year I'm making brandied fruit. This is trashy but oh so good. They made it at the restaurant I worked at in Nashville and sold it at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Equal parts of brandy and sugar with canned pineapple chunks, mandarin oranges and frozen, pitted cherries, in the fridge, 3 weeks or so. The fruit starts to ferment and the sugar completely dissolves in the brandy making a syrup. Like jello shooters but with fruit cup instead of gelatin. Good over ice cream or pound cake or just in a bowl (high octane, though). So that will go over well at work and that's one less thing to sweat.

Clearly I am sleepy as I have devoted a lot of real estate to my brandied fruit plans. Who says blogging is self-indulgent? Anyway Happy Thanksgiving Week.

From my friend Lisa, regarding Michael Jackson:

Let’s set aside for the moment the question of who on earth would let their 12-year-old son stay with Michael Jackson. Let’s focus instead on why any 12-year-old would want to stay with Michael Jackson. Has he had a hit record at any time during this child’s consciousness? In fact, has he done anything this kid would be aware of except get progressively creepier?

It's early in the morning and after dreaming about cats committing suicide I'm seeing the morning papers online as I drink my coffee. The flu...so 1)it's spreading fast this year (per the CDC the flu has hit a wider percentage of people than in 1976!!!) and 2)The vaccine this year is kind of wrong.

If you've ever gotten a flu shot then you've read the explanation sheet...the flu changes a little bit all the time and the flu that one gets in September is different than the flu one would get the following May. That's why vaccines are encouraged for EVERY year, unlike, say, smallpox which is stable ("drift" is what the flu is doing). Not sure how they go about guessing what the flu will be like in the fall when they begin manufacturing the vaccine but apparently they guessed wrong; the flu that's doing its thing is different from the vaccine.

Cheery statistic-around 35,000 Americans die of the flu every year.

On another note, apparently a journalist went undercover and got a job as a servant in Buckingham Palace. Undercover reporting is pretty much dead in the US, killed by lawsuits. Interesting that it's okay to go undercover as a journalist in the UK but not talk about what Prince Charles was *allegedly* doing with that servant. If only THAT servant had been an undercover journalist...

And, as always, I'm fascinated by Michael Jackson (and how ironic that the name of the album he released is "One More Chance") We, as a society, disagree on all sorts of things but can't we agree that it is not okay for adults to share their beds with adolescents?

And here's a cool thing from the BBC about Bush's kick-ass limo

Irv Kupcinet was buried yesterday and the Chicago papers are full of it.

He wrote a column in the Sun-Times called "Kup's Column" that ran for 60 years and he had a tv talk show for a bazillion years as well. He's kind of like an older, cooler version of Larry King as far as I can tell...here's Kup with Malcolm X, here's Kup with Lauren Bacall, etc.

I have two, very tenuous connections to the late Kup. One is that, in the building where I work there is a physician who has some sort of Geriatric Medicine specialty...there are always some extremely old people on the elevators trying to find the button for the 10th floor. And Kupcinet was one of the patients so he was often being wheeled in and out which was pretty exciting to my colleagues who remembered his glory days.

The second is that I worked with a guy named David at Second City who had just moved to Chicago from LA. He and I smoked weed in his car once. "It's not really my car," he explained of the mammoth sedan, "it's my grandfather's" Well, now from the footage on the news I see that David was Kup's grandson. I got high in Kup's car.

This morning I have some spam offering me "Brain Damaged Hoes".
Ewwwwww.

I'm all about this new National Geographic "100 Best photographs we never published" (that's not the official title but you get the gist)
The pictures, of course, are so, so beautiful. A cluster of Santas heading down into a Manhattan subway. A polar bear shaking off the water after a swim. A romantic couple at an Ole Miss fraternity party. All evocative, all complete and beautiful and all struck from their respective stories. They "just didn't work"

This week there is also an interview with Ira Glass in The Onion who, in spite of being called "Glasshole" by his colleagues at the local NPR affiliate (representative quote which perhaps explains this response-he starts out by saying that everyone who works for WBEZ is varied and competent and then notes:

But the thing that characterizes them all is that there's a kind of understated, "I might have been a person pledging, but I took an extra step, and now I work here" quality to the whole thing.

I was romantically involved with a gentleman once who worked for this radio station, and I had met Ira a few times as a fan and he was utterly gracious. But when my then-beau introduced me to Ira, at a party, adding that I was friends with Ira's Administrative Assistant, Ira looked at me as if I had handed him a turd in a frilly paper cup.

But be that as it may...Ira (we're on a first name basis, I fantasize, me and Ira) describes the process of developing a show and one thing that he describes is that they try lots of stuff, decide that, for whatever reason, it doesn't work, and keep going.

I worked at Second City for a couple of years and during that time I saw so many brilliant scenes, characters, ideas that didn't just work. I saw other ideas that worked but only when split into thirds, when combined with other ideas, when set to music.

Making stuff up is hard. Being creative is no joke. This is the other side of "everyone is creative". It's true, everyone is creative. But everything doesn't get kept. Everything doesn't earn an accolade, even the really good things, the things that might be wonderful units unto themselves, yet don't serve the whole. Sometimes those get scrapped as well.

I'm turning to these thoughts right now as I am home now after taking my second Hip Hop class. Here is the thing...even if I become incredibly proficient at this dancing, I'm still gonna be a 34-year-old white guy who is not too shabby at getting down to The Neptunes. So there's really no winning if "winning" means becoming proficient as you go. Nope, it's not like that. Here is too much information to assimilate at once...a series of moves, some are low and bouncy, some are crisp and syncopated, one involves doing a goddamn hand stand, just go, just go, just go.

"You don't get a raise for doing it right," our instructor, who goes by the name of Boogie said last week, "And they aren't gonna raise your taxes if you do it wrong." You are better off doing it wrong, but looking happy than "right" and pinched.

But it is so hard not to be pinched. What do you do in an environment where you aren't permitted to gain mastery before moving ahead? do you throw up your hands? or do your best and fucking smile.

I've been smiling.

Now here is the honest truth...I wish the class was easier. I'm not a bad dancer and I want the class to be very modest and play to my skills. I want to go and be a miracle every friday night. But instead I'm having to feel like a beginner, one who needs to smile.

After class I got on the train and went straight to the pool so I could swim some laps. I wanted to feel proficient and had planned ahead, bringing my swim gear. Here is the thing...funny that I use swimming as a way of feeling proficient. In January of 2001 I signed up for swim lessons, only able to tread water. Now I swim laps. 2001...that's about 1,000 days.

I've rejected all sorts of things in those 1,000 days. But some stuff I've kept and some of that stuff, in turn, is awfully cool. Today, I go swimming. And one of these days I'll be standing on my hands when Pharrell sings "Beautiful..."

It just takes a lot of fucking work to have anything left over that's worth hanging on to, that's worth showing to somebody and saying "hey! I did that!"

Okay, I'm not really doing any work today.

So I came across some stuff about paid vs. free content (the topic was about paying for newspapers online). Several different essays make reference to Stewart Brand, he of the "information wants to be free" idea.

Turns out the real quote is more complicated than that. Here's the whole passage:

Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine -- too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, "intellectual property," the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new (technological) devices makes the tension worse, not better.

I'm listening to The BBC World Service at work and they keep discussing the mysterious-thing-Prince-Charles-allegedly-did-and-he's-denying-everything...nobody can actually say WHAT did or did not happen that he was or was not a part of and I went online to see what I could find.

No luck so far although I do like this guy, a Prince Charles impersonator who does actually look like the Prince of Wales. A link at the bottom of the page lets you know that this is part of the Professional Impersonator's Web Ring.

You can hire look-alikes for Prince, several Sean Connerys, the usual Elvi and Marilyns and a site that promotes the idea that the key to successful celebrity impersonation is in duplicating the eyebrows (they sell stencils).

Okay, I'm done with midterms next week so not much blogging until then. I keep reading all these articles about how something like 25% of blogs are never updated after their 1st entry and some other whopping percentage are updated like 1x every two months.

Don't want to be one of those.

Slate has a big piece about the re-design of The New York Times and the piece mentions that the newspaper is a hot topic on typography web sites like this one.

Gotta love the web.

Okay, it sucks having bed bugs. But it would be much, much worse to be overrun with monkeys.

Sorry so underblogged of late.

Today has been a mixed bag. On the negative side I think I've figured out why I have such a terrible itch. I had decided that it was a recurrence of eczema, a condition I only had once and that was during a time when I needed to say, "we should just be friends," and instead of saying it, I had inflamed, itchy skin.

Last night I itched so badly, I left my bed and went to sleep on the futon in the office...no itching.

A while back I came across a mention somewhere in the news of the resurgence of bed bugs in the U.S. which, it turns out, are a real thing. They hang out in your bed linen and suck your blood. In the dark. The swollen welts on my thighs and calves seem to bear this out as does the only-happens-in-my-bed piece of the story.

So I've started in on the laundry which should be fun and I've bought some very formidable looking insecticide foggers to detonate tomorrow. However I was up itching for lots of last night and so I'm tired now (it's a few minutes to midnight) and yet not sleepy. Just cross and self pitying about the stupid bed bug infestation and wondering how I got them and wondering how I ensure that I don't get them again. Ick. I started having itching last week, before the arrival of my friend John who would otherwise be a possible culprit. Of course John didn't set foot into my room, much less the bed unless he snuck in there while I was out at work but that doesn't seem his style and, like I say, the itching and apparent bed bug-ness happened before John showed up. So I don't know. It does seem bed-specific and not about my other furniture so that's good.

Okay enough about the fucking bed bugs. I saw the stage production of THE LION KING tonight. Friends of my dad's were going and had an extra ticket at the last minute so I sat on the 10th row for free; cool, no? I have to say this was one of the few times when the advance hype didn't ruin it for me, it was super cool. I tried wrapping my mind around the logistics of the show...so how the hell do they launder some of those costumes? How long does it take to learn how to walk on stilts, in the dark, with a big-ass giraffe head on top of your head? How long must the tech rehearsals be for the show (ouch)?

Okay, that's enough for now. I went on the Nitty Gritty Bus Tour last Saturday and intended to blog all kinds of stuff about it but here it is Thursday already and I have midterms this week. The tour was sponsored by the horribly named Chicago Headline Club. The Headline Club is the oldest chapter of The Society of Professional Journalists and this is the second year they have sponsored this tour. Hosted by Ron Grossman (who, I am pleased to announce, looks exactly like his picture) the tour went through some of Chicago's neighborhoods off the beaten path.

"Absolutely NO ALCOHOL on the bus!!!" warned the registration sign-up. I've been reading THE BOYS ON THE BUS, an account of the press coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign and I was excited about getting on this bus; they have to warn us not to drink?!? Awesome!

Alas, I knew it was not to be when I got to the rendezvous point in front of Tribune Tower. The beautiful clothes and enormous, early-morning smiles let me know I was in the presence of broadcast journalists. Print journalists and broadcast journalists aren't terribly fond of each other. In my classes, the broadcast majors are openly disdainful of having to write anything, at all, ever. Based on my tiny sample, it seems like those who yearn to be on-camera news reporters are mostly interested in the on-camera part and journalism offers a way of being on television without having to hang out with a bunch of creepy actor types. In class it's the broadcast majors who are most surprised by the most rudimentary elements of civics; who is the governor and how does his job differ from that of a senator? for instance.

The folks from ABC Channel 7 stood around in the chilly morning (the bus left at 9:30 and was scheduled to return to the Trib at 5:30 p.m., an all day affair) discussing the advantages and disadvantages of different camera angles available at that location. The rest of us stood around eating corn muffins, drinking coffee and eyeing one another warily. Journalists are introverted egomaniacs, notes the author of THE BOYS ON THE BUS and that sounds about right. This leads to another point of conflict between broadcast and print; the broadcast folks are extroverted and therefore much more upfront about their need for attention which seems unseemly to us, shuffling around in our weird clothes, notebooks in hand and cynicism in our hearts. It's not that the print folks don't warm up; I shared my table at lunch with the new Chicago bureau chief for The Christian Science Monitor who was perfectly friendly after we had hung out in each other's orbit for a few hours.

One of the things that makes journalism so interesting to me is that it forces a writer to become an instant expert on a wide range of topics. Last term I had to write stories on the mayoral campaign, Wi-Fi technology, car-sharing programs, a profile of a gay punk rock musician, an all-women's baseball league from the 1940's and others. I thought about this watching our tour leader, Ron Grossman who didn't tell us his age although he did mention that he had graduated from college in the 1950's so you do the math. Grossman makes a very cool old guy and I think it's being a journalist; remaining constantly curious, always learning. This keeps a person, if not young, then certainly vital.

I was there for 9 hours and I have pages of note but it's late.

However I will say that I learned this...that in most cities ethnic groups will follow one another. For instance, the neighborhood Pilsen in Chicago was settled by Czechs who then moved to the neighborhood Little Village and arriving Mexicans settled in Pilsen. The Czechs became more affluent and they moved to nearby Cicero, the Mexicans moved into Little Village and so on, the Mexicans following the Czechs (Cicero is now way Mexican and I wrote down where the Czechs went next but it's late and I don't wanna bother.) That's Chicago. However, throughout the U.S. blacks have always followed Jews. Chances are, according to my guide, if there is a neighborhood in an American city that is predominately black, chances are if you go back far enough, you'll find the time when it was primarily Jewish.

The other major lesson of the day was that if you want to get a bunch of journalists excited you should give them a bag full of stuff. It doesn't have to be wonderful stuff, we don't care. It's the thought that counts. One of the community activists on the tour understood this and gave each of us a bag with Xeroxes about her community along with a mango (lots of Indian and Pakistani residents in this neighborhood). We lined up as if none of us could possibly afford a mango. Other community organizers didn't give us diddly squat and one community organizer, this one located at a housing project, spoke really softly even though we kept asking him to speak up and he insisted he was speaking as loudly as he could even though he wasn't loud enough to hear from 4 feet away (ironically, his topic was that the city was ignoring his group. DUDE, MAYBE THEY JUST CAN'T FUCKING HEAR YOU.)

Not speaking up loudly is a good way to piss off a group of journalists.

To recap: Bags with free stuff, no matter how petty? Good. Failing to make interesting, or even audible quotes? Bad.

The Chicago Tribune reports today that Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (as opposed to Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.) is endorsing Dean.
Woo hoo!

Doesn't Cuba Gooding Jr. already have an Oscar? Why, then, are we subjected to a movie where he plays someone who is retarded?

The BBC is once again discussing the issue of overly high hedges causing bad feelings between neighbors. There is a great photo captioned "Protesters have fought a long campaign against hedge abuse". This does not appear to be a joke. A small change in UK law will soon allow local governments to intervene in hedge disputes. Clare Hinchcliffe (love that name) is the spokesperson for Hedgeline, a group the BBC describes as the national lobby and support group for the victims of high hedges (and clicking on that link does seem to confirm this) had this to say:

(for) Clare Hinchcliffe, who has campaigned for six years against nuisance hedges, it is the end of a long fight.

"The victims of high hedges have waited a long time to hear this. Hedge bullying will now be clearly labelled as what it is, anti-social behaviour."

In the next seven to ten days I will be free once again to kiss strangers, share their cups and cigarrettes, and generally carry on. I got the meningitis vaccine today.

There was an outbreak of Meningitis in Chicago last weekend, centered mostly on the gay bar Little Jim's. 4 people are dead, two others are in critical condition. Chicago had developed a plan of action in the event of biochemical warfare and they decided to put that plan into effect, urging folks to get vaccinated. I got it today, not because I have ever been anywhere near Little Jim's except once, to take a leak, but because it seemed dumb not to and besides it was free and it lasts 3-5 years and antibiotics get less and less effective every day so what the hell.

Meningitis is sucky all sorts of different ways, you can learn more about the specifics by clicking here.

A brief search of the web indicated that there is no ribbon one can wear to promote Meningitis Awareness. There is, however, a ghastly plush toy named J.W. who is the mascot of Camp Riley, an otherwise fine institution for children suffering from the effects of meningitis.

A truly stupid concept can transcend all language barriers.

Friday evening and I'm home in front of the computer? Lame? I dunno...I am feeling like swine in excrement because I'm getting caught up on the blogosphere. Alas my day job has been requiring me to actually, you know, work lately so I'm not getting all the media I want. I swam laps earlier, now it's time for pizza and blogs.

For starters here's a dynamite story about attempts by both democrats and republicans to capture the votes of Arab-Americans (according to the story there are 4 million Arab-Americans located in Michigan, the hot spot, and six other states, all considered up for grabs in the 04 elections).

Of course "Arab-American", like "Latino" or "Asian" doesn't mean "homogenous group". It's Romeo and Juliet time if a Mexican falls in love with a Puerto Rican and don't get anyone started on Cubans and of course there are many more groups to consider. It's just outsiders who say, "I dunno...they all speak Spanish...let's treat them as a single group!" This is, of course, true with Arab Americans as well.

I am favorably impressed with a blog put out by, of all organizations, ABC frigging News but The Note is sharp and, while tending towards plugging the Mothership a little too often (oooooooh George Stephanopolous traveled with Joe Lieberman in the candidate's Winnebago and will have an exclusive on Sunday? I'm so psyched) I suppose it is unreasonable for all corporate blog-like entities to maintain the same sense of objective distance Slate appears to maintain from its sugar daddy. Nevertheless it tracks all of the Dem candidates individually so, if you want to see what Sharpton is up to (addressing a whopping 150 students at Claflin University, a historically black college in Orangeburg, SC where he received what the blog notes was a response described as mild, medium at best) then this is your spot.

I guess it's good that I have to work because otherwise I would just sit here, looking at this stuff all goddamn day.

No one does cute, weird animal stories quite like The BBC. Here's one about a newly discovered purple frog.

The National Association of Convenience Stores is hosting a trade show in Chicago this week and The Chicago Sun-Times did a piece on all the wacky products found there (energy popsicles, a low-carb malt liquor, etc.) with a side bar about how the NACS trade magazine is doing a story in the November issue about Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the convenience store owner on The Simpsons.

"There are some retailers who truly think he is one of the worst things that has happened to our industry,'' (industry spokesperson Jeff) Lenard said. But Apu is also one of the most honest, lovable, good-hearted characters on the long-running show, he said.

He's a highly educated family man, Lenard said.

But, Lenard notes: "He often keeps a loaded rifle behind the counter and chases shoplifters, two dangerous practices that increase the likelihood of violence.''

Lenard also pointed out that Apu maintains a poor selection of food.

Monday, at least for another 57 minutes and thought I should update since it's been since Thursday.

Had a great weekend, one of the top all-time weekends, really. My friend Alex visited from Canada and we had a great time. Part of it was our connection. A band called The Beautiful South sings this lyric:

Well it can take many years to forge a friendship
It can take a lifetime to get close
But we took all the shortcuts, used our hearts as a map
And we still got closer than most

and that sounds about right.

But the other thing I find about hosting a visitor is that it brings out that best part of me...the part of me that lives vigorously, that fixes potatoes at breakfast, that sees exciting live theater and checks out an exhibit of sculpture inside a conservatory. It's not always enough to be all that I can be just for me. So it's nice to have a visitor who makes me want to try harder than I otherwise would.

My other reason to blog today is to pass along this from my friend, Katie who is a very reluctant passer-alonger of websites so her recommendation gave it quite a seal of approval. What it's like to learn Japanese. Nicely done.

I started subscribing to a bunch of email newsletters from The Poynter Institute, a group that provides resources, seminars, discussion lists, etc. for journalists. It's one of those sites that makes me want to sit in front of the computer non-stop.

One of the newsletters is called "Al's Morning Meeting Feedback" which tracks interesting stories and suggests angles, approaches, etc. Here's an interesting item from this morning's newsletter...my copyediting teacher would be cranky that I am simply repeating this as if I have confirmed its truth but hey, isn't that half the point of blogging anyway?



From Australia's The Age:

The American Billboard singles chart top 10 is made up exclusively of tunes from black artists for the first time. Nine of the 10 are rappers, plus one track by R&B singer Beyonce and reggae star Sean Paul.

I am unsure what this story really says. It might say something about how record sales, or urban music popularity, or how people buy music now, or what Billboard does or does not measure. I will be interested in what you come up with.

Anyone besides me surprised that this is the first time? Considering that I have basically given up on white people in popular music (I could not possibly care any less than I already do about Dashboard Confessional, Radiohead, ColdPlay, etc.) I felt confirmed by this top ten.

Also from Al I've learned about a brilliant idea, The Democratic Primary Embeds!!!

And not from Al, just from Chicago...Cubs won last night and the garbage strike is getting resolved this morning.

Now that Ahnuld has won the governor's seat, there isn't really any reason that other sexual creeps can't be elected to office.

Witness former congressman Mel Reynolds of Chicago's South Side who went to jail in 1995 after he was convicted of sexual misconduct, child pornography and obstruction of justice relating to an affair he had with a campaign volunteer who was a minor. Today's Chicago Sun Times notes:

Convicted felons running for alderman in Chicago are nothing new, but political experts can't recall any convicted sex offenders running for Congress.

"Offhand, I don't know of any," said Ian Stirton, a spokesman for the Federal Election Commission. "I don't think it would be particularly [something] you would want to emphasize in your campaign literature."

Reynolds served 5 years in prison before being part of that last-minute series of pardons issued by Clinton before he left office (it's useful to remember in this time of W. that Clinton almost never lost his capacity to be a little bit creepy). Although his criminal record has been wiped clean, Reynolds is still listed on city and state websites that warn of sex offenders.

"Well, so what?" Reynolds said. "And what would you like me to do about that? That is a requirement of the law. What is that going to do to me? How does that affect my life?"

I'm full of schadenfreude over the tiger attack in Vegas, of course, but I'd like to direct your attention to a different entertainment story, this one found on the BBC's website:

Adam Ant has remade his classic single Stand and Deliver in aid of the Dian Fossey Highland Gorilla Fund with the lyrics changed to "Save the Gorillas".

This morning I was reading the Chicago Sun-Times online and was struck by a banner ad for the U.S. Army with shadowy, arabic writing in the background. Clicked on it and found this application for becoming an army linguist.

Battling the end of a change-of-seasons cold so I stopped by the video store tonight to load up on DVDs to keep me occupied this weekend in between learning "The AP Style Manual". My local video store mixes in the new arrival kiddie with the adult (not Adult, just not juvenile) and the spanish language with the anglo. Imagine my horror when I came across this Barney wanna-be; Ladies and Gentlemen, I present Juana La Iguana.

I'm listening to the Cubs play by play on the radio right now...it's nice having a winning team to follow. I moved to Chicago in 1997, the end of the Bulls dynasty and I quite enjoyed watching those games on television, and even more going out into the streets after the team won the championship and my Puerto Rican neighborhood got into their cars and sat, happily gridlocked in the streets, honking their horns and not going anyplace.

In between today's play by play former Cub Ron Santos is plugging his "Ron Santos Walk To Cure Diabetes" which is taking place this Sunday. I have no beef with Mr. Santos, of course, and I think it's terribly unfortunate that he himself suffers from diabetes. And I suppose that 25 years ago, when the charity walk was concieved the notion of A Walk seemed like a good idea. However, Santos recently had both of his legs amputated in connection with the disease so there seems to be something of a mocking quality to the whole endeavor. Or maybe that's just me.

Maybe it's a generational thing but I think walking for a cause is weird and not very effective. Of course it could be that the real benefit is not to the charities that benefit from the monies or the awareness raised in a walk, but that it gives those on the sidelines...friends and family members...an opportunity to feel as though they are doing something, taking action.

"Nuttin' but garbage! Straight up garbage!"
-Flava Flav

The garbage collectors in all of Chicagoland are on strike. The garbage collectors are organized under the Teamster's Union. Okay, I realize this is all based on THE SOPRANOS but explain this...the teamsters and the garbage haulers are on opposite sides???

Nevertheless, our office has informed us that they will only be removing wet garbage from our office.

Okay, I don't mean to turn this blog into "I'm old enough to remember..." but goddamn I remember the environmental movement of the early 90's when grade school kids sent their used, styrofoam containers back to McDonald's and convinced the burger biggie to use more eco friendly materials. Today we have single serving chip containers in hard plastic cylinders so that they will rest in cup holders.

What happened?

Before clicking on the link, Take a guess!

Zach Wamp

Is it
1) An unsigned jam band?
2) A U.S. Congressman from Tennessee?
3) Harry Potter's latest nemesis?

Hip deep in homework so a quickie blog here.

First of all, the Cubs won yesterday so we are all very excited here on the North Side of Chicago (southsiders are cranky and bitter because their White Sox came close but not close enough).

Someone on WBBM News Radio spoke with a ticket broker who said his cheapest seat for the playoff game against the Atlanta Braves is $325. The reporter found that 1)There are still tickets available at the box office for the games being played in Atlanta and 2)It's cheaper to fly to Atlanta, stay in a hotel, and see a game there than to buy the cheapest ticket from a broker here.

This is a common story in Chicago...we had the final pre-Broadway previews of THE PRODUCERS and once again, cheaper to fly to New York and see the show there than to buy tickets from brokers here.

I kinda, sorta root for The Cubs (I would have rooted for The Sox as well which marks me as a deeply unserious baseball fan, a charge I don't deny) but I really root for The Democrats which makes me especially proud of The DNC and their new blog which they call DNC: Kicking Ass.

I would prefer living in a culture that had respectful discourse between those who hold differing opinions. But since I live here, I'm thankful that my guys are showing a willingness to brawl.

I was chatting with a friend from high school this evening and she recommended that I look up a mutual, long-lost friend on Google. So I checked out Piper Kirk.

She was in all the musicals in high school and, if you click on her links, you will hear her original, country music songs which I am relieved to say are pretty good (well the one about Black Stetsons that I listened to was good).

Killer analogy AND personal revelation from the website:

If there's anything I recognize, it's a man in mid-life crisis. And I think that's exactly where Nashville is right now.

Also, Piper mentions this fact which she nails more succinctly than I have ever managed to do:

And by the way...Appalachia is spoken with short "a" sounds. The Cherokee had no long "a" sound in their language. Ya get high-falutin' like the weather channel does, and ya show your ignorance.

***

There have been several stories in the Chicago papers lately about crazy cat ladies, all of which I have intended to link to but I didn't so you'll just have to take my word for it. But I would like to point you to an older story, by Susan Orlean, about a crazy cat lady who keeps tigers rather than house cats. The term for this is animal hoarding and, according to Orlean, cats are the most commonly hoarded animals "although dogs, birds, farm animals, and, in one case, beavers, are hoarded as well. "

Ooooh Oooooh child, things are gonna get easier,
Ooooh Oooooh child things'll get brighter
Someday, yeah, we'll put it together and we'll get it all done

This is the second day of getting things done.

I have this to say. Even if I have the most tenuous hope that my in-box, which is to say, that space beteween the easy chairs in my living room, never gets processed, I have some new insight into being me.

I don't think it won't get processed, rather, I don't think that it will be in some seamless, 48 hour endeavor.

Is this what it feels like when you are dyslexic and someone finally tells you "hey, here's why you couldn't read "Clifford The Big Red Dog" and here's what you can do about it"

???

This is what I thought about today, swimming laps:

"What if, actually, I wasn't a quitter and a failure, just someone who didn't get this particular instruction manual"

This is, I think, accurate, I discussed this once with my astrologer friend, Lillian.

"You feel like everybody else got an instruction manual except you," said Lillian, "and you are right, they did. However once you track down these instructions, LOTS of things will fall in place."

This is the other thing Lillian told me, she said, "You will be able to figure this out
in writing, that writing, that making words solid and permanent is your strong point and you will be able to use this to get what you need.

Oblique deck-bloggable yet?

This is more on the nerd tip than on the ultra-self-actualizing tip, but I bought what, I think, may be the ultimate wastebasket.

It is:

1) Bright red!
2) Cheap (less than $3!)
I almost bought it, at full price ($14) a few weeks ago, but the fact that it's on sale is all the better.

it's right here next to me, next to the rolling, 3 decked trolley that probably delivered municipal dinners in a previous life, it now handles my in box.

Let the record show, I toted a big-ass, red wastebasket from Evanston, IL to Chicago.

I like to swim there (Evanston) since their Y is the nicest with both one pool for kids and another pool for lap swimmers) and there is a nice, mall-esque center there next to the Dempster stop what with the faux SPAGGIO'S and the WORLD IMPORTS and the BORDERS and the aforementioned URBAN OUTFITTERS ("do you know where I am?" said a bona-fide shopper this afternoon, "on a chair! In Urban!")

In Urban. In Urban Outfitters, that Pier One of Gen X.

This? This is what I think.

I think the Baby Boomers made baldness acceptible. Have it close cropped or have none at all but no hair is a legitimate option.

I think Gen X will make paunches acceptible.

You've got guts, that's what I like about you.

Opinions? Options? Holla.

D. Reynolds

Today is a day the nerd hath made.

I realize this is probably not a common Lottery fantasy but if I win The Big Game one of the first things I would do is hire a graduate student in library science, point him or her towards my piles, my files, my stacks and say "Figure something out" I have someone who cleans up my apartment. If I'm hungry I can go to a restaurant. But the organizing thing...papers, forms, on and on - how would I delegate that? "Figure out what I was thinking here and develop a system to let me use it if I want to".

I bought a how to get organized book. Actually it doesn't descirbe itself as an organizational book but rather a Getting Things Done book (that is, in fact, the title Getting Things Done). Surprise-"Organized" and "Effective" are old friends. These are not my strong suits, being organized or getting things done, and it was $5 used on Amazon.

The author, David Allen, makes a nice analogy early on...if you have a folder that you absolutely must bring with you to work then you probably put the folder in front of the door or under your keys. Rather than concentrate on "gotta remember folder, gotta remember folder" you just set up a foolproof system. Anyway the goal is to set up a system so that life's folders are waiting in front of their respective doors when it's time to go rather than keeping all that in your head.

As Allen says, this is more work than (you) have been doing but not as much work as you are afraid it will be.

This sounds good because I've never had much success with getting stuff organized. I have functioned pretty well but it's anxiety filled, the way I ensure that things get done is by worrying about them. I also make lists, keep calendars, track things on notes, etc. but it does not feel systematic or reliable.

He has some nice observations...for instance maintaining To-Do lists sorted not by project but by context (so instead of a to-do list for planning a vacation there are actions that go on the Make Phone Calls list, actions that go on the At The Computer list, actions that go on the Errands list, etc.) There is then a master list of projects, and so forth.

Although he has a large, scary flow chart that gets reproduced several times (If the object is not actionable it is then Garbage, To Be Pondered or Reference, if an object is actionable it is either to be Done, Delegated or Deferred onto a list and on and on) but other than the flowchart itself, he's not too dogmatic about any of this and it is all very common sense sounding, however it's common sense that has thusfar passed me by.

Today I did the first half which was make sure I had enough file space and that it was easy to access (no I didn't have either, again that would be common sense that I hadn't been using...oh yeah! Files! And something to hold them!) a label maker, and picked something to be my in-box.

Then I gathered everything into the in box ("everything" means something out of place that needs action...library books to be returned, a coat needing a replacement zipper, the Master Card bill, an electrical cord I couldn't readily identify...everything that is homeless and not rubbish). And while doing this wrote down on pieces of paper any random thoughts of stuff to do. Tomorrow, Sunday, I have to empty the in box (in reality a box and then an enormous pile in between the armchairs in my living room) and do all the list making, calendar commiting, and so forth described elsewhere in the book.

I'm told that I will really feel satisfied after doing that part, the lists and calendars and so forth, and I'm doubtful (that is one big-ass and unruly looking pile) but I was doubtful that I was going to like this collection part, all the assembling of these random things, that it would make me feel a sense of progress and accomplishment way out of proportion to the effort. But that's totally how I feel. So I'm cautiously hopeful about this next part.

Off to pizza and videos with a friend.

I'd like to be your one-stop blog for news of oversized rodents.

Here's an artist's rendering of a guinea pig the size of a buffalo (alas it lived 8 million years ago and visitors to modern day Venezuela cannot see one) and here's the article which points out that, among the predators this rodent, nicknamed "Goya" had to contend with, there were "huge, flesh-eating birds called phorracoids".

Okay that must be some HUGE flesh-eating bird if it's gonna go after a buffalo-sized rodent. Scientists believe that Goya was too big to burrow (no kidding) and couldn't outrun his predators.

Lastly I'd like to point out that Google does not have any matches for "Phorracoid" and when you inquire about "Huge, flesh-eating bird" you are directed to this site which is a collection of oral histories of Vietnam helicopter pilots.

Why the cover-up?!?

There was a renovation at the downtown branch of the Chicago Public Library (the one named after former mayor Harold Washington) that took my two favorite departments...the multimedia department and "CPL Express" which had new releases into one large department featuring all the music CDs, DVDs, books on tape, and hot new books a fella could want.

While there I checked out the 4 DVD set of PBS's AN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: CHICAGO CITY OF THE CENTURY (the century, by the way, is 1800-1899) which totally rocks, in spite of being narrated by David Ogden Stiers.

So this is what I'm learning about my adopted hometown...early on Chicago attracted ambitous young men who didn't intend to remain, they just wanted to make their fortunes and leave (most ended up staying). Chicago wasn't necessarily better situated than Cleveland, St. Louis, or Milwaukee but it did have more of these ambitious young men. When the concept of The Railroad first appeared, Chicago had a critical mass of people willing to invest in this new venture with the result that all railroad lines connected to Chicago; it became the hub. If you were gonna go east or west, north or south, you had to pass through Chicago.

Chicago is all about introducing efficiency to America and the world. Cyrus McCormick develops a reaper as a way of harvesting wheat. Wheat apparently is easy to grow-just drop seeds on the ground-but a pain in the ass to harvest. Men would walk the fields whacking away at wheat stalks using sicles and scythes which then had to be collected. Lots of wheat would just die right there in the field. The McCormick reaper looked like a ferris wheel...rotating blades that would cut wheat in a path created by a horse pulling the reaper. This was a huge, huge efficiency. Later, the grain elevator (invented in Buffalo but put into widespread use in the midwest near and in Chicago) meant that grain could go straight from wagon load to storage to freight car rather than be packed into bags and handled in such relatively tiny units (a sack of grain would travel from the farm to a stream, from the stream to a river, from the river to a larger river, from that river's port to a freight car, from that frieght car etc.) thereby increasing efficiency.

Increasing Efficiency, on a large scale, always leads to a ton of money. Think of Silicon Valley, Microsoft, the internet boom and the growth in the 90's. Sure some of that was illusory but those gains in productivity are real. Imagine, for instance, a law firm without benefit of a word processor. Imagine life before computerized billing. What were things like before bar codes?

Chicago had this kind of innovation. How can we collect enough ice in order to process pork year-round and not just when it is cold? And now that we have said ice, how can we get enough pigs to keep busy? And then package those pork products. And then transport those products everywhere.

Steel and Petroleum get all the flashy credit for being old-school multinational industries but Pork was first. Before Chicago, pork was a local, intimate affair. Pork came from your pig or perhaps your neighbor's pig. The idea that pork could be a commodity, like a bolt of fabric or a bag of sugar was a new concept, one developed by Armour in Chicago.

The slaugherhouse was the precursor to the assembly line (Henry Ford visited the stockyards and adapted the ideas he saw there to his manufacturing lines in Detroit) with hogs tied by their feet to lines, their throats slit and their bodies cut into components. The slaughterhouses became attractions for tourists...appalling and impressive at the same time.

All the waste, by the way, was being dumped into the river and the river was so greasy it caught fire during the Great Fire of 1871.

Also some talk in this documentary of the immigrants, mostly Irish and German. The Irish were so loathed that black people would move out of a neighborhood if too many Irish moved in. The Irish came mostly to dig canals and sometimes the city didn't have the money to pay them and would issue bonds, allowing the bearer to buy property. Enough Irish collected bonds and bought property, a neighborhood on the South Side called Bridgeport, and did not remain itenerant, canal-digging labor but put down roots. Bridgeport remains an Irish enclave today. Mayor Daley (Sr.) raised his family, including Mayor Daley (Jr. and current mayor) along with 3 other of Chicago's mayors. In 1997, a black kid named Lenard Clark rode his bike through the neighborhood and was beaten to the point of brain damage by local kids.

Germans didn't speak English but had industrial training back home and generally assimilated more easily than the Irish. Both groups drank quite a bit but they each thought the other had drinking problems. Irish drank in a saloon, standing up and quickly, buying rounds for one another. The Germans drank sitting down, with families and they disdained the practice of buying rounds for one another, noting that it made people drink more than they might otherwise in order to keep pace with the group. Hence the concept of Dutch (Deutsch) Treat...paying for yourself.

The city was all built of wood and it went up quickly in the great fire of 1871. Here's something to think about in the wake of commemorating the disasters of 9/11. After the fire, fully 1/3 of Chicago's population, or 100,000 people were left homeless. This, of course, in the time before coordinated public assistance efforts.

How does it feel to be on the cutting edge?
From a BBC online supplement called "Ten Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Week" says:

Blogs are just the thing, aren't they? Well, no offence intended, but no. Research by analysts Forrester has confirmed that blogs have a mighty long way to go before they can possibly be thought of as mainstream. Just 21% of Americans who have internet access had heard of a blog and fewer than 2% visited them regularly.

Johnny Cash and John Ritter?

a day that will live in infamy

Sometimes I feel old.

I heard a journalist on NPR this afternoon. She's written a book called NOT MUCH JUST CHILLIN' about middle school kids. One of the topics she was talking about was Grinding which she described as a girl and boy on the dance floor and he stands behind her, writhing into her butt while kids circle around chanting, "Go (girl's name), Go (girl's name)."

I just discussed this with a 20 year old friend of mine who chuckled and said, "certainly you know about grinding?!?" Uhm, no. The circling and chanting isn't mandatory, according to my source, but the dancing "like in a rap video" is pretty standard.

My middle school and high school years were a netherworld as far as dance steps were concerned. You could Dance Like Sting which was a sort of skipping, kicking dance as the once cool singer of The Police did in the video for SO LONELY. Or you could dance like a hippie which I once heard described as Washing The Ball (you've seen it...that wiggly arm motion, as if the dancer was wiping off the bottom of a disco ball). This was before the running man, the cabbage patch, you might get in a little bit of robot or The Wave. But no grinding.

Grinding seems to be a way of being explicitly sexual without actually having intercourse. My middle school seemed to have a lot of making out and Truth or Dare going on (none of which I participated in...middle school was very WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE for me) and while there wasn't any grinding going on, I don't think it would have been out of character for it to have happened.

And hey, you gotta love a youth subculture that can come up with a dance that makes the elders unhappy.

An instructor of mine last term said that culture wars always heat up in presidential election years and that there is always renewed focus on the bad influence of the media on Youth Of Today. So let's see if Bush ignores his Iraq debacle and miserable performance domestically and decides to focus on grinding.

Listening to a mix cd for my pal Alex and feeling sleepy. Went to Evanston today where my high school friend Stoney Westmoreland is shooting a movie, the followup film by the guy who made the first Project Greenlight movie.

Stoney and I haven't hung out in a long time and it was genuinely easy to slip back into conversation...nice when that works. Two hours of walking and an hour of eating made for an excellent afternoon.

I went swimming afterwards...I want to see how close I can get to swimming a full mile by the end of the year. I'm at 1/4 mile now which isn't too shabby...I imagine the track in a park near my job and what it would be like to swim a lap of that. Anyway I swam yesterday and Friday as well and now I'm pooped. Thus endeth today's blog.

Back after far too long away. All work and no blog makes Drew a dull boy. Really.

Listening to the fine, fine Black Eyed Peas song "Where is the love" and happy to have hands on the keyboard. This song features Justin Timberlake...I don't have cable at home but it was in my hotel room in Canada and I feel as though I am now fully caught up on the phenomenon that is Justin Timberlake. So here's my feeling about Justin...is he biting Michael Jackson (or as everyone seems insistent on saying "MJ")??? Yeah sure although Michael Jackson doesn't seem interested in being Michael Jackson anymore so somebody oughta be doing it. Also, Justin Timberlake seems as well adjusted as anyone who is an international pop sensation could possibly be. And when the interviewer asked him about the death of pop I thought he very articulately pointed out that 50 Cent sells a lot of records, Nelly sells a lot of records, Eminem sells a lot of records so it isn't that pop is dead, it's that pop is now largely hip hop. Also, unlike Christina Aguilera, he doesn't insist on referring to himself as an artist every other sentence.

Sorry to be so incredibly shallow but I've found a new place to get my hair cut. For the past three years I've been going to Tonya's...I don't know who Tonya was but she's long gone and it's owned by a Palestenian guy. Everyone smokes and they watch Al Jazeera and it's only $6. And for a long time I was cool with the $6 haircut since it was the same haircut I've been wearing since I was 20...buzzed on the sides and short on the top. Not like boot camp but like a military officer who has enough rank to wear his hair slightly longer on top. This is the thing...nobody wears their hair this length anymore. And I decided I was turning into one of those guys who keeps the same hair cut he had when he was twenty...except the GenX version (instead of the dreaded ponytail). And I've tried talking to the guy at the Palestenian barbershop but it's not really sinking in. So I looked on the web and found Big Hair in Roscoe Village, an easy bike ride from my apartment. A little less than an hour's wait made pleasant by conversations with others waiting about Rockabilly (playing on the stereo) and the book I was reading The Devil In The White City which is 1)Excellent and 2)Sure does make you appreciate living in modern times. Haircut wise I look much more modern, at least 1998, and I've learned how to ask for this hair. This is what you say, "I'd like it clippered with a long guard on the back and sides and textured on the top." Bueno.

A little bit about that book...it's set in the Chicago of the 1890s and, among other horrors, it points out that 1,000 trains entered/left the city every day, all of them traveling at street level. What with all those trains, an average of two pedestrians died every day. It wasn't unusual to come across corpses of human beings, not to mention all of the dogs, cats, rats and horses that died all the time (they would freeze in the winter, bloat up in the summer notes the author). I bet I get asked for spare change twice a day...I don't usually stop. Imagine being that blase about dead bodies. I think I would like to hold the line at this level of callousness and I'm thankful I don't have to step over dead bodies every day. Let's hear it for modern times (and crossing gates and elevated tracks).

Today was the first day I had a chance to check out Al Jazeera's english language website. In mid-August the U.S. State Department launched a pop culture magazine aimed at young Arabs around the world called "Hi." The magazine is premised on the sketchy Bushie idea that they hate us because they aren't into our freedom so let's show them how cool we are and then they will realize the error of their ways.

At the time the magazine launched over the summer, one member of the target demographic said that young Arabs are plenty clued into Western pop culture and that rather than try and get Arabs to think even more about Western pop culture than they already do, maybe Americans should try and think about Arabs.

Well, I'm doing my bit, starting today. I imagine paying attention only to Al Jazeera is like getting all your news from the Fox Channel but it's a start. I really like the headline Turkey to prolong dubious pop contest...hey which pop contest isn'tdubious? The contest in question is The Eurovision Song Contest which is hosted each year by the previous year's winner. Since last year's winner Sertab Erener was from Turkey, that nation gets to hold this year's contest. Okay so who held the contest last time? Latvia. If that's not dubious, I don't know what is.

Still if you would like to find out a little more about the apparent international Turkish pop sensation Sertab Erener you can go to the Sertab Erener official website (which plays a bit of music...She's good but, you know, no Justin) and which, at least on my computer, sensed that I was an English speaking poseur and redirected me to the english version which features one pic of Sertab with her dog and a pic of her with a fella.

See? A little bit of Arabic culture each day goes down smooooooooth.

If you are still in a multi-cultural mood, don't forget about last year's winner Latvia. Latvia's currency is The Lat and they boast one of the world's most valuable coins, a $100 Lat coin (worth around $160 according to the BBC). The capital city and home of last May's song contest is Riga and the official Riga Latvia tourist info website asks "Maybe are you asking some questions about this new increasing Metropolis?" I'm particularly partial to the link to Traditional Latvian Party Foods which breaks it down thusly, "Basically, Latvian food consists of chicken & pork fillets battered in egg and deep fried served with traditional dark rye bread and lots and lots of salads and fresh vegetables". Except for the rye bread, this isn't all that different from Tennessee and I'm full of a warm, We Are The World feeling.

To round out the multicultural feeling, can I just point out that Hi Magazine is published by The Magazine Group who also publish the magazine for Jewish Women International.

I ask you-is there a better retail slogan in the world than From Wine To Twine?

This would be Honest Ed's which had one window display of only bras, bras stacked and stacked by color, dozens, grosses of bras like so many solo beverage cups next to a keg. Other windows were less mono-product...Back To School! or Visit Our Cafe! But Honest Ed's is a bonafide throwback, an Old Navy, a Costco, a Wal-Mart from back in the day. Ed was (is! is!) a helluva merchant with his three story blinking lightbulbed testament to low prices and high volume but his real love is theater. The store is full of autographed glossies, of pieces of old sets (a pair of volkswagon-sized cuckoo clocks are labeled as being from a production of Into The Woods in a downtown Toronto production Honest Ed had a hand in underwriting, for instance). Honest Ed's was my second favorite retail experience of Toronto.

Number one was The Beer Store. The Beer Store is a real thing, a store that just sells beer. They are owned and operated by the government, much like the liquor stores in Washington State. In Washington State, distilled spirits are sold only from stores operated by the state and while this is a pain in the ass, you can see the state's point of view...not only the taxes but all of the retail markup go to the state's coffers so why in the world shouldn't vice pay for itself in this way? Ontario goes all the way on this one, you can't buy beer or wine in groceries or convenience stores. Gotta go to the beer store. (note to aspiring journalist self...so did Honest Ed's sell any wine or was that just a cute slogan? Shoulda checked that out, dude).

A beer store sells only beer, no wine or spirits, no sodas or chips or lottery tickets or mylar balloons. Just beer (in all fairness I visited a goverment-run store selling the full range of fermented beverages in the Eaton Centre which had blond wood and chambray-shirted clerks and the patrons all had plastic cards giving them bonus air miles with their purchases which was pretty classy) and is as orange on the outside as a Hardees.

Inside there are wooden shelves holding one empty can or bottle of each of the beers sold in the store. The guy in front of me wanted a case of Labatt's. The clerk took his money, gave him a receipt and went into the back.

I don't know the name for this sort of belt...it's not a conveyor belt, I don't thnk, but a series of wheels on a series of axles arrayed along a track. They are in factories and used to slide heavy, unwheeled things. I'm not describing it very elegantly, perhaps I'll revisit this later, but a track you slide boxes along. There is one on either side of The Beer Store, along the side walls, next to each cash register. The clerk is going in back and putting a case of brew onto the track and sliding it out, through those hanging flaps that keep coolers cold to the waiting customer.

That's a beer store and they have a new magazine, distributed for free in beer stores called CHILL. Which is cute...not just maintain a state monopoly but have a slick magazine to extort some advertising dollars. There's a recipe for roasting a chicken over a can of beer, an appreciation of Bob and Doug McKenzie and yoga for couch potatoes.

Other cool beer store experience to share...so I'm waiting for my malt-liquors-of-many-nations (Ontario thoughtfully labels each beer with its alcohol content to ensure maximum fucked-up-edness for your buck. Your loonie. Whatever) and a skinny kid barges in with a pair of empty bottles and an Irish accent...he just got a fuckin' $135 fine! For drinking! And then the clerk comes from the back, having slid another case down the conveyor belt and the skinny kid says, "sorry for the swearing just then, I didn't realize you were here." The best part? The skinny, drunk, cussing, Irish kid was wearing a Tennessee Titans jersey.

Toronto was great, huge, big fun and I want to take back all of my snide, Americanist comments about how Canada is a sorry, also-ran of North America. More soon but back in front of my computer...just 36 minutes left of being 33 years old. "What do you like to do after sex?" asks a jokey quiz in the new GQ, trying to determine if you are a nerd (nerds are good according to the premise of the article; damn, who knew GQ was gonna rescue my ass?) and one question asks what you like to do after sex...Cuddling? Smoking? or the winner Blogging.

Indeed.

Forty-Eight hours from now I will be in Toronto and I will be eating me some Tim Horton. I assume that this was once a posessive...Tim Horton's but posessives don't exist in French...you say the doughnut of Tim Horton rather than Tim Horton's doughnut and, because of the whole Quebecois separatist business, it's easier for companies doing business in Canada to call the whole thing off (or Did Somebody Say McDonald?)

I'm fascinated by the whole Quebecois thing...partially because it's hard for me to imagine that french speakers could be lower class, ever. And partially because Canada has dealt with Quebec much differently than, well, we would have. It's as if we sat down in the early 70's and said, "Okay Arizona! New Mexico! California! We totally stole you from Mexico...that's our bad. And we are going to keep you as part of the U.S.A. but we want you to be yourselves! Totally Mex-out, okay?" And these states put all of their signage in Spanish and got kind of cranky if anyone dared to speak English.

On one hand, there is a lot to be said for encouraging multiculturism. Canada is good at this, much better than, I think, the US is. We still think melting pot whereas Canada is much better at the gorgeous mosaic, the salad bowl model. Here's the thing about a salad bowl though...sometimes you end up with a big-ass piece of cucumber and that isn't what you had in mind. Part of the gorgeous mosaic is a willingness to be inconvenienced sometimes. The Chinatowns I've been to in Canada are China Towns with no English signage to help you along. Those subway announcements in Montreal? French only. Multi-culturalism is so much easier to embrace when it's effortless...when the world is one big sea of tasty food and interesting music.

Does multiculturalism mean that I don't get to be verbal...my strong suit? Does it mean-horrors-that I, as a white male might not WIN? Well, then that's a different story.

As an American I get it both ways...I can talk the talk of loving multiculturalism while knowing that there is no danger that I will call a customer service number and the default language is Vietnamese, press 4 for English.

There is a charming website called An American's Guide to Canada where the author describes what Americans expect because they're Americans:
Life
Liberty
The Pursuit of Happiness

here is what she describes Canadians expecting because they are Canadian:
Peace
Order
Good Government

They make an interesting line by line comparison
Liberty : Order
The Pursuit of Happiness : Good Government.

?

As a baby journalist, I wish I knew more about the American Expats who fled to Canada during the Vietnam war. What did it mean to Canadians to have such a group in-migrating to your nation? Did the American draft resisters stay and put down roots like those fleeing Hong Kong before it returned to Chinese rule? No guidebooks point me to Americatown. And how would I know Americatown when I found it? And what are the numbers...after there was amnesty for those who fled the draft, how many Americans returned home and how many stayed put?

I've visited Vancouver and Montreal and always imagined Canada to be America Lite. Like us, just less so. I visited Madison, Wisconsin a few years ago and read a profile of a local band in an alternative newsweekly and the band described themselves and their scene as being in complete and total opposition to the bullshit that was going on in Chicago.

Which I thought was so cute. Because Chicago doesn't spend a second of time thinking about Madison, at all.

On the other hand, Chicago spends TONS of time worrying about how we compare with New York and Los Angeles and repeatedly reassuring ourselves that we are actually superior to them. But I don't think the residents of New York ask themselves "okay, how are we stacking up against Minneapolis?"

Canada seems to, in large part, define themselves by being Not American. And, while you can see their point, I don't know that this is enough.

I like to think that I'm fairly well informed about recent history but I was surprised to learn that On This Date In History, The American Hitler was shot and killed in Virginia. Named George Lincoln Rockwell, he believed that Eisenhower and Truman were traitors and should be hanged.

Two things worth noting: 1)Dude was born in Bloomington, IL and 2)attended Brown University (!)

Even before being name-checked in Bush's Axis Of Evil speech, North Korea had some serious public relations problems. And they are tackling those problems with a classic public relations cure, pretty girls. Let's hear it for the North Korean Cheersquad!!!

South Korea is hosting a series of athletic events that are serving as qualifying matches for next year's Olympic Games. Apparently the cheerleaders were first deployed at some multi-national games held in Busan in 2002. Security is tight, keeping the women away from foreigners although young men have been flying paper airplanes into the cheerleader's section of the grandstands, according to the New York Times.

"Our papers say, `Come talk with us, have a cup of coffee with us, come walk in the park with us,' " said Kang In Ku, organizer of a group called Young Patriots. It is unclear what success the group will have with its come-on line: "Stop being concubines of Kim Jong Il. Come to the arms of freedom."

Tomorrow I'm going to see my friend Sara's art piece. She doing something with The Roof here in Chicago. As far as I can understand there are several big arty billboards being hung or maybe just one arty billboard being hung but for sure Sara has HER arty billboard being hung.

It (Sara's Billboard) is a Salute To Famous Fatties. Sara describes herself as a fat activist and herself as a fatty much as an activist lesbian might describe herself as a Dyke or a black person as a Nigga. It's supposed to be a reclamation. And I'm all in favor of a wider range of bodies being seen as not just acceptable but also attractive and desirable. So I'm all in favor of art that promotes this particular point of view.

I feel weird about the famous fatties. I once worked as a walking messenger in Seattle and it was the only time I had to worry about eating enough calories. Shortly after I moved into an apartment with my boyfriend, an excellent cook, I stopped being a messenger, started working as a dispatcher, and gained 70 pounds.

One of the messengers, my friend Petey, tried consoling me by telling me about Buddha and how his wisdom was measured by his girth...the fatter he became the more wise he was. It was meant in a spirit of kindness but it totally freaked me out. I didn't want to make friends with the idea of being fat. I wanted to cloud everyone's minds so that no one would be aware of me being fat.

This, to some extent, is still true. I want to take the homeless guys aside who address me as, "Hey Big Guy!" and say, "look, do you realize the inherent shortcomings of your pitch here? Call me...strong man. Masculine dude. Whatever. But "big guy" isn't doing it on the spare change front." I don't want Sara to celebrate "From Buddha to Biggie" on her billboard. I want the norm to be me, I don't want to be an activist but a pacifist.

I'm about ten days away from being 34 years old. When I was a kid, kids were skinny except for those who were the fat kids, like me. Today, at least here in Chicago, kids seem to be mostly kind of fat. So maybe I don't have to be an activist. Maybe I can give it some time and the youthful norm will be Plump.

A woman once told me that I was "well-marbled" which is my all time favorite euphemism for being overweight.

August is ending and the world is a better place.

The biggest and best news is that I finally heard from Betty Jack DeVine, the genius behind the gay NASCAR site Gaytona.com. She was every bit as charming in her email as she is on the site and I'm looking forward to interviewing her. Especially since that damn New Yorker ran their own article about NASCAR this week. Though, weirdly, the most interesting stuff is not in the article but rather in the Q and A with author Kevin Conley.

Finally started reading The Lonely Planet guide to Toronto this morning riding the el to work.

In 1999, Chicago held "Cows On Parade" with lots of artist-decorated fiberglass cows decorating the streets. Other cities copied the idea (Chicago had copied it from Zurich, Switzerland who did it first in 1998) and in 2000, Toronto decided to fill their streets with Moose. Mooses? Moose, yet plural, that's what they were up to in Toronto in 2000 and fortunately, like cows, there was a ready pun; Moose-eum. Note that they opted not to use this pun and instead settled on Moose in the City which would make a very good Sunday show for HBO-CANADA, I think (Giving the parade a dull name was bad but worse was to make the commercial sponsor not Moosehead Beer).

I should point out here that if your municipality would like to have a slew of whimsical, painted animals on YOUR streets, you might want to check here with the folks at cowpainters.org who offer not only unpainted cows but also a frigging ton of other animals including alligators, pellicans, a whippet and three kinds of turtle. If that is too much hassle, you should just go to cowparade.org. They offer "A Turnkey Art Event" for cities (Hello Atlanta!) who would like to jump ahead to the snapshots by tourists and the charitable auction, skipping all that tedious "call to artists" business. One call and cowparade does it all.

But back to the many moose(s). According to Lonely Planet's account, some citizens of Toronto (hey, what's THEIR plural? Torontons?) were outraged that the city would spend money on the moose thing and not on affordable housing, education, blah blah blah and began defacing the sculptures. So an emergency hotline was established, along with a website www.antlerwatch.com both of which ensured a rapid response to the issue of moose vandalism.

Those of you who are fed up with animals on parade...actually even if you adore animals on parade, you might want to read this excellent piece from the departed but not forgotten suck.com. And you also might want to take a lesson from Chicago; cows work.

Other stuff????

Chicago's follow up was ping pong. Not whimsical, artistic interpretations of table tennis. Just Ping Pong.

Ping pong tables were put in public places...building lobbies, outdoor plazas, under the Picasso sculpture. An odd choice to follow-up the cows but the cows brought strangers together which was the plan for the ping pong tables. Nope.

After the ping pong fiasco, Chicago tried a parade of fiberglass...sofas. Yep. Sofas. "Suite Home Chicago" had 1) the fiberglass and 2)the cute pun. But no one gets excited about having their picture taken next to a sofa. ("There's a sofa with wings!" "There's a sofa balanced precariously on something!" etc.)

By last summer, the city had more or less given up and settled on "Music Everywhere". In this press release, Mayor Daley threatens that municipal musical chairs could be among the attractions while Cultural Commissioner Lois Weisberg insists that Music Everywhere will amuse and delight both visitors and Chicagoans while featuring value-added incentives and special hotel rates.

This year Chicago got the All-Star game and managed to completely blow exploiting the game in a fiberglass manner by using All-Star Bobblehead Dolls situated on a few (33) street corners. They looked like spraypainted store mannequins with poorly attached heads. They were hard for kids to reach and adults weren't that curious about making their not-unusually-proportioned heads bobble so they just stood there, unwhimsical and desperate looking.

Listen people. If you want a parade, I say "Cow." "Moose" is actually a really good choice for Toronto since it's Canadian and it offers a lot of surface area to work with and "Moose" is a funny sounding word and presumably they too got some mileage out of the difficulty-with-plurals schtick...nice work Toronto! Other cities-if you have something big and tenuously associated with your city ("The Big Pig Gig" was the event for the Area Formerly Known As Cincinnati...hey I don't recall any prior Americana celebrating the pork of Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky but I try very hard to not think much about Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky so that's probably my bad) you might consider it. But please keep in mind that cows have both proven public art fair cred but also enormous popularity in greeting card shops.

Weirdly, another greeting card shop staple, Angels, were not such a hit when they paraded in (duh) Los Angeles. This site explains the A Community Of Angels project ("In 2001, over 170 Angels graced the streets of the Southland. This year, our goal is to expand that to 200 angels. If you don't know what A Community of Angels is all about, keep reading!") The deal sounds perfect-artists would make angels, communities would display them, citizens would bid on the angels with the proceeds going to charity (after, presumably, the organizers got their cut for running the whole thing), new angels would appear in the neighborhood and the delighful process would begin again.

Sadly, the splash page (www.acommunityofangels.com) today blares

BLOWING THE WALLS OUT
EVERYTHING IS ON SALE...PICK UP GREAT GIFTS

The store and project close down at the end of December.

OWN A PIECE OF L.A. HISTORY

and shows a warehouse of angels lined up like giant pigeons if giant pigeons had been airbrushed like conversion vans of the 1970's.

A nice email today from s6myfl702 who came across this very blog and, after saying nice things, Blogrolled me. I take it blogrolling is like logrolling...where I give, say, David Sedaris a nice blurb to put on the back of his book and then, in turn HE gives me a nice blurb to put on the back of my book. Logrolling.

Considering that I got my first ever cell-phone last week, I'm unlikely to manage a full-on blogroll right now, I'm afraid. However I would like to encourage you to check out s6myfl702's blog which is called Precision Blogging. Many droll observations and some useful facts

The right way to wash dishes rarely:
You say you want to leave dirty dishes in the sink for days at a time? You’ll be happier if you don’t encourage the anaerobic bacteria that create the worst smells. When you stack dishes, put a utensil between every pair to let air in. The worst smells develop in airless pockets between dirty dishes.

See? Here's my plug:

Watch out Andrew Sullivan! There's a new blogger in town and his or her name is s6myfl702!

This just in...Illinois House Bill 3086, recently signed by Governor Blagojevich prohibits tongue splitting.

While I am generally opposed to the government interfering in the non-violent-yet-peculiar actions of private citizens, I'm not gonna go to bat for tongue splitting.

Ewwww.

Today I want to talk about gerbils. Specifically the Giant Gerbils (16 inches long) that are infesting north-western China.

These giant gerbils (scientific name Rhombomys Opimus which means "Rich Rhomboid Mouse") eat lots of vegetation and make complex burrows underground. They are so numerous that they are causing the grasslands where they live to become desert. The area they have screwed up so far is 11 million acres which the BBC points out is the size of Switzerland.

The BBC News site also describes the gerbils as being "the worst rodent disaster to hit this region of Xinjiang in 10 years". Alas, we aren't given details on other rodent disasters in Xinjiang so that we might compare.

Reuters talked with Xiong Ling, described as "an official with the region's headquarters for controlling locusts and rodents" (and who presumably is tracking these various other rodent disasters yet is not giving up the info, at least on the web anyway. Come on Xiong Ling, get with it!) in a story saying that the Chinese intend to solve the problem with both poisons and by training eagles to prey on the giant gerbils.

I appreciate that these folks want to attack the problem using natural predators but how many giant gerbils can eagles eat anyway? Wouldn't you need a frigging ton of eagles?!? And then do you end up with an eagle problem to go with your giant gerbil problem? Short sighted, I think.

If all this talk of gerbils and their habitats has you, like me, thinking of Habitrails, here's a site that offers product reviews of the various items in the Habitrail line.

If all this talk of gerbils has you, unlike me, contemplating the urban myth that some gay men stuff gerbils up their butts, you're on your own link-wise.

Walking home tonight from the train I saw a woman in a hijab eating an elote from a pushcart vendor parked underneath the grocery with the cambodian signage outside.

I'm writing all of this down to remind myself that it's actually a happy, multi-textured world out there. Because inside my head it's all August.

What's wrong? Nothing. Things are objectively fine...not only is there groovy, multicultural action going on right outside my door but work is going well, I'm about to go on vacation, I have money in the bank, food in the fridge and messages on the answering machine. Still, I feel like a big, cranky baby.

Last year I got an astrological explanation for all of this...something planetary is happening to me in August, shortly before my birthday and it puts me off. My friend Lillian is an astrologer and, as peculiar as this may sound, a no-bullshit sort of astrologer and once when discussing it with her I decided that astrology was kind of like punditry. For an astrologer to declare that my celestial alignment is such, therefore XY and Z will occur is much like the talking heads who point out that the midterm elections normally result in a loss of seats for the party who controlls the white house. It's not an ironclad rule, it's just an observation. And the Astrological pundits have declared that while Leo is out galivanting around, this particular Virgo is on the dormant side.

So I'm holed up here, eating corn chips and blogging. One day soon, Lillian's web presence(s) will be back up and running and I will link to them and delete this sentence.

Today I heard an interview with author Mike Stanton who wrote The Prince of Providence about the corrupt, mobbed-up mayor of Providence Rhode Island. The New York Times gave it a mediocre review but the detail that made me want to go buy the book in hardcover was that the mayor kept several different toupees depending on the occasion. For instance, he had a tousled toupee for fires, accidents, tornadoes, events when he didn't want to look too slick.