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

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

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

A definition:

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

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

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

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

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

Notes the coming out story:

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

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

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

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

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

From the online description:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(pause)

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

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

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

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

Go Josh!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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