Sometimes it just takes a little press.
I was interviewed this morning on WBEZ's Eight Forty-Eight program about Gapers' Block. The interview went fairly well (I said "uh" a little more than I would have liked, and stammered a bit, but I was cogent overall), and I had emails of congratulations in my inbox as soon as I hung up the phone.
Among the many emails I've received since have been four press releases for upcoming events, an request for a listing of yet another event, and an advertising inquiry. Oh, and a note from a guy I haven't heard from in about 4 years.
I suspect this sudden interest in GB from non-bloggers will only grow in the coming weeks. I know, one radio interview at 9:30am the day before a holiday isn't exactly prime-time, but it's a start, and it's part of a growing level of recognition. Considering we've been up just six months and we're already topping 1,000 unique visitors a day, that's pretty good.
We've got a lot to be proud of. And thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving.
All right, Alison has received the Jehovah I made for her, so now I can show it to you. Just click on the link below and check it out. I warn you: the images are big, so the page will take awhile to load.
I'm now working on one for Naz, and in the meantime, you can check out the books Alison and Naz sent back to me.
My fez didn't show up.
We were invited to a fez- or tiara-mandatory party Saturday night, and the Turkish-made fez I bought on eBay didn't make it in time (it was flying to me via Belgium, so I'm not all that surprised...), so I did what anyone would do: I cut a tiara out of cardboard and painted it with lots of tiny little fezes (fezzes? just fes? what is the plural of fez?). I neglected to bring my camera, so all I can do is point at Lacey's photos, which don't show the feztiara either. Louisa's got some pix, too, but again, no feztiara. I'll have to take a picture tonight.
Some of the night is a bit of a blur -- did we really play spin the bottle?!? Anyway, much mayhem later, the Golden Angel diner beckoned with promises of greasy food. It didn't stave off a hangover, but it softened the blow a bit.
Sunday brought a trip to Oak Park for a Movie Dictator Night. We watched Oliver! and a terrible made-for-TV movie starring Shannen Doherty. It was a scarring experience, but we lived through it somehow.
There are a whole lot of lousy drivers out there, and when you're on the road as much as I am, you encounter far too many of them. It's not very often that you get to do anything about it -- short of honking the horn, there's not much one driver can do to contact another driver -- but I've gotten to do it twice this week.
The first was on my way home. In Evanston, switching from Sheridan Rd. to Chicago Ave., I ended up behind a pick-up whose brakelights weren't working. I've seen the truck before -- both times with three youngish Hispanic men inside. Fortunately, I was able to pull up next to them at a light a couple blocks later and let them know. The driver was surprised and grateful.
Then this afternoon, on my way back from lunch, I pulled up to a stop sign and was about to cross when I noticed a white Escalade coming toward the intersection from the left. He wasn't slowing down, so I stopped and watched him blow through his stop sign and pull up next to the Cadillac dealership at the next corner. The driver was dressed in a suit and tie, and the truck didn't have any plates but had the dealership badge on it -- so either it was someone on a test drive or a salesman. When I got to the office, I looked up the number of the dealership and called. I asked for a manager and told him what happened, described the location and the truck, and he apologized and said he'd check into it.
So I felt a little vindicated. I have no idea whether the driver will get in trouble, but at least I did something about it for once. At least I was able to.
Oh, Michael Jackson.
Jesus, Bush!
Dammit, Martha!
Aw, come on, Bears.
Fer cryin' out loud, Osama.
I really don't understand the reaction against "gay marriage." How does the union of two men or two women erode the integrity of the family? How does it affect your family at all?
The most common reason I've heard for being against gay marriage is "Marriage is between a man and a woman." Well, who says? The idea of what's permissable in marriage is an evolving definition, so claiming it's this and not that isn't going to cut it. Not too long ago, people were crowing against marriage between people of different races, and before that they were up in arms about marriages of Catholics and Protestants, christians and jews. My mother, a Catholic, caused a scandal in my father's Protestant family when they were married; now two of his brothers are also married to Catholics, one to a Philipina. A cousin just married a black woman. None of it caused a stir -- in fact, Cinnamon and I feel more pressure for being an unwedded couple than they did about getting married. (We're living in sin, you know.)
That's really what it's about: "marriage" is a religious thing. Marriage, to the people who oppose gay marriage, isn't just a union between a man and a woman, it's that union before the eyes of God, whichever god or gods that may mean. So when they say "Marriage is between a man and a woman," we should all mentally append the statement with "in my religion."
Which is fine. So be it. I don't want to change your religion anymore than I want you to preach to me about mine. But the argument for gay marriage isn't about religion anyway. It's really about the rights that marriage bestows on a relationship, not the religious aspects. It makes little sense to me that a couple in a committed relationship, regardless of the gender makeup of that relationship, can't be granted the same legal status as a traditional male-female marriage in the eyes of the law.
There are plenty of male-female couples who would love to gain those rights without the religious overtones -- including Cinnamon and me. So if it means changing federal law so that it says "civil union" instead of "marriage," I'm fine with that. You can have your religious marriage, but let Cin and me, let Tony and Tommy, let Kim and Karen have our union, too.
I'm getting that itch again: I fell asleep last night thinking about new layouts for this site (and others). I know, it's bad form to talk about redesigns, but more than anything I bring it up because it's symptomatic of the focus I've had on design lately.
I kind of switch back and forth from being visual and textual in my creativity, usually emphasizing one over the other at any given time. Recently I had been thinking very textually, developing a concept for a sort of memoir. And now, prossibly because of the trunk show, I'm thinking in terms of design and art and stuff. Which isn't to say that I won't be doing the memoir thing, just that it's on the back burner for a little while, mentally.
Partly because I need to work on the design of that project so that the presentation framework is there when I'm ready to unveil it.
The DIY Trunkshow went spectacularly. I sold all but three of the 40-odd matchbook notepads I made, a few of the gift cards and five floppy disk pictureframes. My booth was hopping the whole day -- it was great.
(To explain: Matchbook notepads. I bought a whole bunch of vintage matchbook covers -- nearly all pre-1962, which means the strike strip is on the front rather than the back of the matchbook. I printed little pages with ~20% screens of matches on them and stapled the pages into the covers. Voila, tiny notepads, perfect for writing down that cutie's phone number at the bar. The gift cards were the same concept, only with a single sheet of plain watercolor paper instead of the notepad pages -- a different way to address of a present. The floppy disk pictureframes are made with 3.5" floppies which I split at the top and remove the magnetic media, leaving a hole in the middle. I bend the metal slider so that the disk will stand up, and I designed a sticker to seal the frame once you put a photo in it. Perfect for your favorite computer geek.)
Cinnamon and I were pretty exhausted afterwards -- six hours of being in sales mode will do that to you --so after dinner with Christian and Cara (who shared my booth) at Andie's we just went home. We were still wired, though, so we still didn't go to bed till midnight.
On Sunday I got another thing accomplished: I finished my first Jehovah! It's going in the mail to Alison today, and I'll have pictures up tonight or tomorrow. Woohoo! Now to get finished on Naz's, which is about a third done.
It's getting close to Thanksgiving again, which means preparations for a trip to Ohio to see Cinnamon's family and my grandparents. We haven't gotten our new car yet, and the Aerostar isn't going to make it, so my parents have agreed to loan us a different car to make it out there.
One of the things I do in the down times when we're at Cinnamon's mom's is to peruse an old book. I'm not sure of its name, but it was written by a doctor back around the turn of the century. It's essentially an omnibus of knowledge -- such things were common back then, as educated and/or wise folks wanted to pass on their wisdom to others. Everything from calf birthing instructions to homemade insecticide recipes to food recipes are in this book, and it's a wonder to wander through.
I wrote down a couple last time that stood out as just plain strange to modern tastes, although I can see how they might be good, possibly together. Here they are, as written:
Coffee jelly: soak 1/2 box gelatin for 1/2 hr in 1/2c. water. 1qt. strong coffee, sweetened to taste; add dissolved gelatine. Stir well, strain, set to chill.Chocolate jelly: combine 4T. grated choc., 1/2 pt. cold sweet milk & 3/4 lb. Sugar. Dissolve small package gelatine in water, put in 1pt. Milk & boil. Add choc. Milk & stir briskly; when it boils again pour into mold to chill. Serve w/sweet cream.
Last night for dinner we had corned beef, which was pboiled with big chunks of beet and potato. It was excellent, and we had plenty of leftovers. I sliced the corned beef thin for sandwiches, but we also had a pot half-full with very flavorful broth and a lot of beets and potatoes still floating around. I didn't want to waste the broth, so I improvised a soup out of it, which turned out wonderfully.
I added about a cup of red lentils, one diced carrot, one diced stalk of celery, some dehydrated mushrooms and a little of the fattier bits of corned beef, and left it all to simmer for a couple hours. When it had reduced down to a thick soup consistency, I added a little cumin, cardamom, paprika and black pepper (it was already salty enough) and stirred it up, then took it off the heat to cool. We through it in the fridge to eat for dinner tonight -- I have no doubt that it'll be even better than it was last night, now that the flavors have had a chance to mellow and meld.
Despite already planning for soup for dinner, I decided to have soup for lunch today. It's been really cold in my office -- somebody keeps turning off the furnace for my section -- so I picked up some hot and sour soup at the Chinese place down the street. Its totally different from what we're having tonight, so I'm OK with the extra soupage. I'm also OK with this being a very banal post.
"Straight Up with a Twist" was really funny -- although not as funny as the donkey-braying crowd in the back of the theater seemed to think it was. There seemed to be a contingent of the actor's friends who thought they'd help kick the hilarity up a notch by donkey-braying at every remotely funny line. I can't think of a time when I've heard a portion of the audience sell a joke harder than the comedian.
Afterwards we headed over to Ann Sather's for the opening night celebration. I noticed that Will Clinger, host of Channel 11's Wild Chicago, was in the audience at the theater -- sitting in the same row as me, actually -- and I got a chance to say hi at Sather's.
Now, having just come from a show about a socially awkward "renaissance geek" (not a metrosexual it turns out) with which I identified a little more than I should admit, it did not surprise me at all that given this opportunity to charm a pseudo-celebrity, I screwed up. In my mind, I was going to be confident and sincere and tell Will that I enjoyed Wild Chicago, that it was one of my favorite shows on television and that I was sad to see it go but hoped whatever he went on to was just as successful. It didn't happen that way.
Will was sitting with Harvey Moshman, the producer of the show, when I introduced myself. I promptly blurted out, "Hi Will, I just wanted to say, you had a great run with Wild Chicago over the past 10 years, and I was sorry to hear it's going off the air." Will looked a little confused and surprised -- which seems to be his standard facial expression, but even more so in this case -- and Harvey points out to me it's been 15 years. Oh, I said, and then realized I watched the 11th anniversary show a couple years ago. I said as much, and Harvey corrected me again: it was actually the "12th anniversary on 11." Sheepish and embarrassed, I said, "I'm just going to walk away now..." and we all had a chuckle, which helped smooth things over.
Will then told me they're still on the air, and that they're planning a special 15th anniversary special soon, which will be more of a "best of" compilation than the live thing they did for the 12th. I then mentioned I had heard a rumor that he was moving on to bigger and bolder things, and asked if it was true, to which he hemmed and hawed and looked at Harvey, and then said I'd just have to wait to find out. I wished him good luck and walked away.
So yeah, I made an ass of myself, and I didn't even think to ask for an interview for Gapers' Block. Oh well.
We're going to see a play tonight at the Broadway Theater called "Straight Up with a Twist." It's a one-man show imported from LA about being a straight man who's regularly mistaken for gay -- in other words, it's riding the "metrosexual" wave.
I admit it: this play is about me. I am constantly mistaken for gay. It doesn't bother me. It's always flattering to be viewed as attractive, who cares if it's a guy or a girl giving you the eye? I'm comfortable with my sexuality to not only be fine with being "ambiguously straight" but also willing to play up the ambiguosity on occasion, either to tweak a homophobic friend or to inject some confusion into a matter.
But I wonder -- is the whole metrosexuality thing just an excuse for men to use beauty products? Is it a plot to give guys a way to open up in a more "feminine" way without losing their manhood? Maybe. Maybe not. But it's definitely becoming a commercial movement as opposed to just a stupid hipster word.
*(Anyone able to tell me what the title is an allusion to wins a cookie.)
After doing my various chores for the evening yesterday, I sat down and watched the "World Premiere" of the Behind the Music episode about Britney Spears.
Yikes. I'm not sure who this thing was aimed at: The hordes of teenaged Britney fans, whose parents may have let them stay up 'til 10pm to watch the whole thing, or the adults who lust after the "no longer a girl, not yet a woman." The program followed a slight twist from the standard BtM formula, presumably because the subject is still performing, unlike the usual has-been fare. We open after each commercial break with five minutes of the present, as Britney prepares for the release of her newest album, then switch to the standard biographical travelogue, without the classic "But all good things come to an end" climactic downturn moment.
I wouldn't call myself a fan of either Britney or Behind the Music. But it was clear to me that the former (or, more likely, her management) had an unusual degree of control and oversight of the latter. I'm pretty sure the Spears team saw this as a way to promote the new album above all else, and insisted on the heavy concentration on the present. There was so much focus on the new album, in fact, that the biographical stuff felt rushed or glossed over (not that it isn't usually, but even more so) to make room for more clips of Britney's surprise performance in Las Vegas, etc. But whatever; it's not like the show was some high-brow cultural document.
It was interesting to hear Britney talk about her admiration for Madonna. I wondered early on whether she might be patterning her career off the Material Girl, and I'm sure the reactions to Britney from people my age and older are very similar to those garnered by Madonna 20 years ago. Following that theory we should, I suspect, see a maturing from Ms. Spears, followed by a critical and cultural acceptance as she delves into more sophisticated musical styles and subject matter. Hopefully we won't have to put up with Madonna-esque publicity stunts, however. I expect to see a pop-culture studies masters thesis on the subject soon.
For some reason, the entire time I've been writing this, I've had Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" going through my head.
Sometimes the vagaries of language get the best of us. My brother was (and maybe still is) notorious for his overreliance on the word "thing." He would use it in place of just about any noun possible, often to describe more than one object in the same sentence. And he would become furious with you if you didn't know which thing was the "thing" he was referring to.
My other brother used to have problems with pronouns -- specifically people's names. When he called for one of us, he would cycle through all our names -- Mom! Dad! Andrew! Peter! Molly! (the dog) -- until he found the right one. Fortunately, he grew out of that soon after he started school, otherwise his teachers might have used him for roll call.
My mom, on the other hand, just loses words altogether. She'll be talking and talking and talking and suddenly come to a halt, unable to find the word she's looking for. Or a name will disappear, as happened when she was trying to say something about a movie we had seen recently and tried to jog our memories by saying, "You know, it was that one with the people in it."
I've got the same problem. I've got a great vocabulary, but sometimes the pages in my mental dictionary stick together and I can't quite get to that one right word. Sometimes I find a way around it, either by rephrasing my sentence or by substituting a synonym or near-match, with the hope that the right word would manifest a little later. I was talking with a friend recently about the birds that eat wild strawberries in her yard. I said she should get a, um, uh, water feeder to put nearby. She knew what I meant and rolled with it, and a split minute later I was able to interject that birdbaths were what most people called those water feeder things.
I worry sometimes that there's something wrong with me because of this. Then I think of the stereotypical college professor, pausing for long periods of time in apparent deep thought, searching his own mental dictionary for the word he needs.
It takes a certain level of laziness, a determination to be lazy, to see that the toilet paper roll is nearly out, and instead of replacing it simply pull out a new roll, use some of it, and then leave it on the counter next to the toilet.
By the same logic used in such an act, that person's refrigerator must contain several nearly empty cartons of milk and orange juice, each with a single sip left, crammed in behind just-opened fresh containers. Aged eggs left over from unfinished dozens must crowd the upper shelf, seeping out their foul odors while newer cartons sit at the ready.
Taking it to the inevitable conclusion, this person's front yard must look like a junk yard, covered as it must be with the removed engines, taken out of the car and replaced with a new one rather than simply getting an oil change.
I've read the Wall Street Journal since college; as a journalism student, I had to read at least one national newspaper, preferably two, and USA Today just wasn't going to cut it for me personally. I liked that the Journal gave me the top news of the day right there in the second and third columns, boiled down to one or two sentences with a pointer to an inside page for the full story. It's an incredibly efficient format.
The Journal has been changing over the last couple years. They added color to the front page and elsewhere. They added a "Weekend Journal" special section on Fridays, then the Personal Journal section Tuesday through Thursday -- reportedly to be able to fit more ads, but these sections also created a place for much of the less businessy material that was previously shoe-horned into the other sections. Just this week they introduced a new weather section, with the thinly veiled connection to finance that weather affects many areas of business, especially commodities markets.
Some see these changes and additions as signs that the Journal is moving away from its business focus. Maybe, but it would only be doing so to meet its audience. The paper is the second largest in the country (USA Today is the first) and if you include paid online subscribers -- as they have just begun to do -- their circulation tops 2 million. Worldwide circulation is 2,661,650. Not all of those people are interested in the daily stock market figures, and the Personal and Weekend Journal sections and the weather report give those readers more of what they've come to expect from other newspapers -- which means they're less likely to turn to another paper for that information, as they would have had to do in the past.
But really, these are not signs of the Wall Street Journal becoming a more standard-style newspaper. Not even if the paper begins printing a Saturday or Sunday edition, as is apparently being discussed. No, the real sign of such a switch will be when the Journal abandons its practice of not publishing on stock market holidays.
I may have mentioned that until we get our new car, I'm driving my parents' old minivan. It's kind of an extra car, which they keep around mainly for the utility -- it's an extended Aerostar, which is mini only in name (I sit at eye level with full size pick-up trucks), so it's great for moving furniture or lugging around my mom's pottery.
I really appreciate my parents' loaning it to me, but boy is it worrying. First of all, it's a gas guzzler: I'm filling the tank just as often as I did with the Golf, but the tank is twice as big. Secondly, three of the four tires have slow leaks, especially for front pair. Lastly and most importantly, it's making some scary sounds when it starts up and when I'm idling at a light. Sounds that make me wonder how much longer the transmission is going to last.
Now this wouldn't bother me that much if I were only driving the Aerostar for a week or two. But I could have it for as long as two months, which might mean driving out to Columbus at Thanksgiving in it. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before that I'm a total auto-hypochondriac -- I turn little car tics and creaks into major problems and expensive repairs in my mind -- so the thought of breaking down somewhere in rural Indiana has me a little tweaked.
When we put down our deposit, the salesman said it'd be as much as a two-month wait for our Prius. Then again, when we came in for our test drive the following week, he offered to sell us one of the models they had just gotten in (they didn't have the package we wanted, so we declined), so there's hope for us yet. Three weeks till Turkey Day: come on Toyota!
Friday night found Cinnamon, Christian and me wandering an abandoned warehouse on the Near West Side, exploring rooms and investigating the roof and mostly lounging on the big skateramp while we waited for Naz's band to set up for a video shoot. Jes and Atomly and Niko came by, and we made another trip to the roof, this time with more pictures. Eventually the band started playing and the video started shooting, but we took off shortly thereafter, tired after all that waiting.
Saturday night we went to Ramsin's Halloween party, mere blocks from where we were the night before, dressed as Hugh Hefner (sort of) and a piece of sushi (hokkigai, specifically). Other than Ramsin, we knew no one there, but that was OK, because the people-watching was extraordinary. It's been a long time since we were at a college party. We left at about 1:30am, got home at 3:30. Needless to say, we slept in pretty late Sunday.