Cavalia

Cavalia
Originally uploaded by mrbikferd

These ads are on top of every cab in Chicago. It's hard to read the yellow text in the bottom of the ad, but I'm 90% sure it says:

"Hi guys! I made a stop motion version of Coraline, only instead of using Polyjet matrix technology, I just took a bunch of photos of my Barbie Horse (Tawney), thanks come see my show!!! <3 <3 <3 "

time flies like an arrow

fruit flies like a banana

Stan Apps, at whatever his blog is called today, has a post about reading text backwards.

which post brings to mind an Anecdote:

When I first moved to Chicago (the first time) (in 1996), I went to the Loop to what was then Marshall Fields to look at the Christmas display and not knowing that the window displays would tell a narrative, I started on the wrong end and worked my way backwards. The window display that year was based on A Christmas Carol, and so the story went something like:
A repentant man buys a goose, then grows increasingly cynical.

(I did this in subsequent years; all Christmas stories backwards are depressing, which is to say more accurate, except for The Nutcracker, which evades explanation in either direction.)

I am also reminded of sitting in a movie theater, which I would have spelled "theatre" at the time, with my friends, waiting for Arachnophobia (‽) to start and talking about running movies in reverse (Kurt Vonnegut does this in Slaughterhouse Five, but we didn't know that): my friend said, "Jaws is about a shark that keeps throwing up people until they open the beach."

This is great!

But is it too great? It seems stolen from something he would have seen on HBO, which I did not have. Googling it now, I find references to it in basically these exact words, though not many, so maybe it is true that we were all funnier a long time ago. Reading old Outlook archives seems to confirm this.

n.b. The picture above of Stan Apps holding a sword is one that I found looking through an Outlook archive. He is not holding a sword because he is about to cut some Gordian Knot of Poetry by reading it backwards; but he is holding it hilariously because this is around 1994, a time when everything was hilarious.

W/R/T poetry, though
Other than liiike Philip Larkin, who for some reason I find hard to get enough of, I don't read much poetry, unless it's in the NYer and it's short enough (sorry, @Erato!) and is hopefully about someone who used to be a dog, but if a poem does manage to get itself read, I usually forget I'm supposed to be paying attention and when I get to the end, I definitely read it backwards (but it's cool: I think we all know that Leonhard Euler figured out the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem by starting at the end and working backwards), based on my misunderstanding of the way "poetry" works, viz--:

(1) a good poem is one that has a real sockdolager at the end
(2) find the sockdolager, and you will "unlock" the "key" to the poem (note: these are metaphors)
(3) then you can go back and reread it with "what you were supposed to have gleaned from it" the first time through in mind

BECAUSE APPARENTLY POETRY IS THE DEATH STAR
It is all defensive and tricky, but there is one hole you can shoot your "photon" into and then it explodes (it is possible I read that narrow fellow in the grass thing too many times in school).

AND SO WITH THIS IN MIND WHAT CHANCE DOES READING FORWARD HAVE:

For: reading bottom to top will increasingly be the practice as we all start going through old email threads in our Outlook Archives to see how funny we used to be and to try to figure out what happened (I was really funny over email in 2000.) (i.e., before the events of 9/11) (but after Kurt Cobain died! Strange!)

All of this to say:

if you sometimes find yourself missing the Silver Age of the Internet when everyone was funnier (before they "bought the goose") (see what I did there?), and regret specifically the deletion of the entire tmftml blog at popfactor ("popfactor"!) and more specifically regret that the Elizabeth Skurnick "Ballad Of The Love-Scorned Anywoman" post is gone: fear not, it is also here on her own blog.

Note: even though it is poetry that is not about a dog, it should be read forward, due to the sockdolager.

Now Playing

The double bill I've been waiting for my whole life.

Now Playing
Originally uploaded by mrbikferd

At the Museum of Science and Industry in [the great city of] Chicago. This was in the "Yesterday's Main Street" exhibit.
I'm kind of thumbs down on the MoSaI because a lot of the exhibits are like "Cows Actually Enjoy Eating Corn", sponsored by Archer Daniels Midland, but I had never seen the Yesterday's Main Street exhibit.

CHARMSVILLE.

I have Total Nostalgia for this period, which period equals anything before 1953 or so and which period I'm capable of having nostalgia for due to television dating from this period was on in the afternoons when I was a kid..? (and which period in turn had nostalgia for Les Georges Herriman et Méliès, or so the MoSaI would have one believe.)

I think we need a national law that says kids must work their way up through the history of television chronologically. No one gets to see The Wire unless they've displayed proficiency in Your Show of Shows, Twilight Zone, Green Acres, All in the Family and the "Jose Chung" episode of X Files.
Maybe an episode of Alice.

Kids these days need to get schooled by some Vic Tayback.

STOW IT, BLONDIE!

It's not the temperature; it's the haze

When I got up, it was negative 11, and the glass of water by the window had frozen at the top. Thanks, storm windows and halfassed weatherstripping. Nice work.
NOTE: I AM BEING SARCASTIC.

If this were a Forgotten Realms campaign, I would totally pray to Auril, the fickle Frostmaiden who crouches at the edges of the Great Glacier, LOL.

Um, I mean: NEEEEERRRRDS!

How David Rees and John Hodgman Saved My Life: A TRUE STORY

I went to see David Rees and John Hodgman last night at Second City ETC, but got a late start getting out of the house (right before I was going to leave, my 19-month-old fell out of a chair and bit his lip so hard (on both sides!), we were debating whether he needed to go to the emergency room; but also: I am poky) and by the time I got there, they were already over capacity, and I had to get back in my car, pay the parking fee ($10(!)) and drive back home.

TOO BAD: These are some of my favorite Brooklynites.

I have been a fan of JH since the apparently on permanent hiatus Little Gray Book Lectures days* and I am surely the only non-David-Rees-relative to have actually ordered a hard copy of My New Filing Technique Is Unstoppable In: “Horse Races” (horse racing as retroactive metaphor for Credit Default Swaps? SIGNS POINT TO MAYBE).

BUT: let’s look at what could have happened had I made it there in time.

PROS
(1) I would have enjoyed something life has to offer

CONS
(1) I probably would have spent money on books (spending money on books is not in the budget at present)

(2) I would have enjoyed myself so much that I would have gone downstairs to the Starbucks in the Piper’s Alley lobby and had a latte and reflect upon the events of the evening (also not in the budget, both the coffee and the reflecting)

(3) Having enjoyed that latte and the concurrent reflection period, I might have hidden behind a sofa when it was time to close the Starbucks (note that getting to spend the night alone in a coffee shop has recently edged out getting to spend the night alone in a bookstore in my brain-hierarchy of fantasies for lonely people) (also note that this Starbucks is 24 hours, but my fantasy life is stronger than my real life).

(4) Being in that Starbucks after hours I likely would have been HIT BY THIS CAB

What have we learned from this?

(1) If you are falling out of a chair, do not bite your lip.

(1b) Not specific to this, but related in my mind: If you are punching someone, do not tuck your thumb inside your fingers; I learned on, I’m almost positive, Laverne and Shirley (although why (1) a character on that show had to punch someone and (2) a writer for the show thought this was useful information to include, w/r/t punching, I have no idea) that you will break your thumb if you do this.

(2) When you see a sign at a Starbucks that says “Drive Through Window”, before you take action, you should ask yourself: “Is that meant to be imperative or declarative?”

(3) Either John Hodgman or David Rees (or both) were Pavlovianly conditioned by Dr. Laszlo Jamf to host book readings immediately prior to taxi accidents.

(4) Disappointment in Chicago will run you ten dollars.

N.B. Their books, which I have not read due to budgetary restraints, are available here and here.


* Witness this Screenshot of Evidence (tip of the hat to Outlook pst files):


By the way, for what it's worth you can still type in the URL that this email was originally about (I cropped it out by accident, but trust me) and listen to mp3s of Selections of Little Gray Book Lectures, though they're not accessible from the main page.

Note also the reference in this email to a mispost of an mp3 file, a precursor to the current misposting of embedded video, for all you fans of leitmotif.

You’re out there, right? Fans of Leitmotif?
If so, welcome.

Holy Cow

Down 8-0 in the fourth inning and still trailing 9-1 in the sixth, the Cubs came back to beat Colorado 10-9.

I am bad at / have no interest in any kind of sport whatsoever (except zorbing) but that's pretty crazy.

Even as I type this, Mayor Daley is taking the Red Line over to Wrigley Field to affix the Brass Erection to the Harry Caray statue oustide the stadium.


(as is tradition)

By the way, w/r/t the title, don't email me and tell me that's a Phil Rizzuto line. Rizzuto stole the catchphrase, "Holy Cow" from Caray.
But as Caray said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

Baseball People steal catchphrases from each other = the joke I was going for there, I guess.


Hey! We all know that the moon is not made of green cheese. But what if it were made of barbeque spare ribs, would you eat it then?
I know I would. Heck! I'd have seconds and then polish it off with a tall cool Budweiser.
I would do it. Would you?

GTA IV

I don't have an Xbox or a PlayStation and although my kids are named Sam and Max, I am fairly terrible at video games (also: I have kids), but I totally want to play this because all of the reviews talk about how it recreates [a satiric representation of]* 4/5 of the boroughs, including many of the restaurants, and as irritating a Midtown was, I find myself missing it at times (mostly when I'm trying to find decent food in The Loop), and if this game allows me to drive over to the crêpe lady at the Cyber Cafe on 49th and 8th one more time, for old time's sake, it would be totally worth it.

NOTE WELL: I promise I will not shoot her after she makes me crêpes just to get my money back, because then: no more crêpes.


* w/r/t the "satire", from the little I've read it sounds like how National Lampoon used to get away with "negro jokes" because they were both "jokes themselves" and "jokes about the kinds of people who tell those kinds of jokes".
Which: when Jesse Thorn talks about "New Sincerity" I think he really means "Being Younger than 25" but if it means not having those kinds of jokes maybe it's 20% OK?

I mean, it's obviously too late for me; I came of age reading Suck. That's why I want to play Grand Theft Auto and not like Katamari Damacy or Viva Piñata or something.

ATTN: 14 year olds looking for Lola Del Rio: you are barking up the wrong tree!
Crêpes are totally New Sincerity.

Hook me up, Shearn!

Explained!

To respond to this post on Doree Shafrir's blog from, like, February, there are a lot of plus-sized women in Chicago. (Dudes too.) According to anocdotal evidence, 83% of the stock footage of people shown from the neck down for the purposes of local news segments on obesity are filmed on State Street (source: anecdotes).

But it can't all be due to Italian Beef and Old Style intake, and so I was happy to find an evolutionary justification for the Morbidly Rubinesque-ness of the city: Cougar-Avoiding: (you think I'm about to make a joke about not DVRing Private Practice but I'm only going to make a joke about not making the joke); viz.--

Thing to Do Number Five on this increasingly relevant list of Things to Do when you encounter a cougar: Do all you can to look bigger.


If you take the cougar's age, divide by two and add seven, and you are still younger than that, better head over to Portillo's. THAT IS ALL WE'RE SAYING.



Whoa: And just as I was posting this, I opened Google Reader, and saw that Doree S~ just linked to the same article. that's weird enough for me to turn off the Internet for the day. If you need to reach me for the rest of the day, do not look on the Internet.

Find Patrick

Chicago - Schuba's 2
Originally uploaded by jcoulton

Hint: he is blurry.
This was a good show, although going into it I sort of imagined a couple things that didn't pan out; viz.--
(1) I fully expected "Podsafe Christmas" with Coulton, Paul, Storm, and several helium balloons (it is only OK to abuse helium if you are a professional entertainer, my mother taught me); and
(2) When I talked to Coulton after the show and said I had just moved here from Brooklyn, the correct answer from him was not to disparage the South Slope, but to say, "Oh, hey, shortly after you left, we devised a technology that will allow you to afford to live in Brooklyn with adequate space and spare money at the end of every month for trips to the cheese store on 7th and the entire Criterion Collection and providing for your kids &c.; so, you can come back."
Since this did not happen: everyone in this picture, please hang out with me and/or babysit so I can do more things like this, only this time with my lady friend.


Except that one drunk girl who was sitting in front of me.
I am sorry: you are a mean drunk.

And we spill some blood on the ashes / Of the bones of the Jones and the Cashes

My current best thing ever is the Internet Archive page for Jon Langford of The Mekons. I’d heard Langford do a (much shortened) version of this performance at the Magnet Theatre at a Little Gray Book Lecture a few years ago, and was blown away by it.

It’s a history of the Mekons and Langford and 1970s art schools in Leeds and early punk and the death of country music and letters from the (non-fictional??) Anne Bourbon-Levinsky to her (fictional???) mother Sophie Bourbon expressing disdain at the whole thing: “Your ship is sinking, mother, because there is a hole in it; and that hole is Jesus-shaped.”

This is a crappy recording, but it captures some of the ability-to-hold-your-attention-ness of the (totally Dashiell Hammett-looking) Langford’s reading, the most striking moment of which, I will transcribe below, thereby likely ruining it.

The Mekons have fallen in with The Sundowners, a trio of minimalist country (while it still had its vestigial tail “& western”) musicians who were the house band at the Bar R-R Ranch in Chicago for 30 years. Langford holds them in reverence:

The Sundowners said they’d play our wedding, sort of, but we never knew if they were coming till they came. As the dark clouds gathered in the June sky, they rolled up the driveway in a big gleaming station wagon, all decked out in their matching silk bomber jackets with the Sundowners logo on the back. They played a set and my friends and family from Wales and London and New York danced around and yelled until the temperature dropped and the band retreated into the house to stuff their weathered faces and schmooze with people their own age. They were very popular with the Welsh ladies.

Hours later, I prized them back outside for a short set, and of course, they didn’t want paying, so I gave them three matching bolo ties I’d picked up at Alcalas Western Wear and they went away, and one by one over the years they got older, and sick, and The Ranch closed down. The mayor, Mayor Daley, made December the fourth Sundowners Day, and we celebrated it with a couple of big parties. Then Don had a stroke and lost the use of his picking hand. And Curt died. Bob Boyd came and sang on the Pine Valley Cosmonauts tribute to Bob Wills. We recorded at King Size, a punk rock studio in hipster Wicker Park. He walked right in, took off his Stetson,
spiked up what little hair he had left, and stuck a metal ring in his nose, saying, “Just thought I’d try and fit in.”

But he was already sick, and he died the following year. We went to his wake and we sat with the families, and looked at pictures, and drank and smoked by the Coke machine in the back of the grim, suburban funeral parlor. 

And told old stories, and somehow felt at home; my three-year old staring, unafraid, at the open casket, asking:

“Daddy, who is that cowboy?”

N.B.

This is a total cliché, but I didn't really understand bagels until I came to NY; I had only had them in Texas and Chicago, so I thought, "This is just round bread; what's the big deal?"

When I finally had a good bagel it was a real scales-fell-from-my-eyes kind of moment (I had trouble with the lox). Shortly followed by the thought: "It is a shame someone can't figure out a way to export this new 'boiling' technology to the central time zone. I guess it's too groundbreaking and advanced. Or maybe the convection oven lobby has something to do with it." And then I imagine I got sleepy and/or watched TV.

Regardless, we just moved back to Chicago, so so long to you, decent bagels.

And so long, as well, foie gras, sort of, since the city-wide band on duck-flavored butter just passed its one year anniversary. Another reminder, as if I needed one, that Chicago is not New York: Norma's at Le Parker Meridien has Foie Gras Brioche French Toast. In Chicago, you have to settle for French Toast with something called "syrup". Step up to the plate, Chicago.*

But I am not one to fret overmuch, and I am thankful that no such ban exists on the ortolan, that tiny, crunchy songbird, which you may remember from the book William S. Burroughs' Cooking for Beginners.

If not, you could do worse than learn about it from this article from The Stranger that came out around the time the foie gras ban went into effect, viz--

You catch the ortolan with a net spread up in the forest canopy. Take it alive. Take it home. Poke out its eyes and put it in a small cage. Force-feed it oats and millet and figs until it has swollen to four times its normal size. Drown it in brandy. Roast it whole, in an oven at high heat, for six to eight minutes. Bring it to the table. Place a cloth—a napkin will do—over your head to hide your cruelty from the sight of God. Put the whole bird into your mouth, with only the beak protruding from your lips. Bite. Put the beak on your plate and begin chewing, gently. You will taste three things: First, the sweetness of the flesh and fat. This is God. Then, the bitterness of the guts will begin to overwhelm you. This is the suffering of Jesus. Finally, as your teeth break the small, delicate bones and they begin to lacerate your gums, you will taste the salt of your own blood, mingling with the richness of the fat and the bitterness of the organs. This is the Holy Spirit, the mystery of the Trinity—three united as one. It is cruel. And beautiful.

And now the sockdolager:

According to Claude Souvenir, chewing the ortolan takes approximately 15 minutes.

Let the word go out: I will not rest until I have watched someone else eat one.



* related: I was always vaguely annoyed whenever I had to go to SoHo for something, but yesterday, sitting in my crappy cubicle in the Chicago office of my place of employ, I had a wave of sadness that I won't have to go to SoHo for something maybe ever again. If you are reading this, and you have the ability to do so, maybe you can go be annoyed at SoHo for me? Thanks, man.