Category: Uncategorized

Received the following email last week, on the heels of news about the other James Garner having a stroke:

Hi,

I want to get a message to James Garner the actor, who has recently had a stroke, he was amiss in getting an official web site so I thought that I would ask you to get in touch with him and give him my best wishes.

This may seem strange but if you knew Indian folk lore you would not hesitate but would seek to tell him, on my behalf, that all is well.

I hope you are able to do this, if not do not worry, as all is well.

Thank you

XXXXX XXXXXXXX

So, if I have a complaint about George Bush, and I quite can’t figure out how to reach him, I should send it to the PR department of Bush’s Baked Beans and have them send it along?

Or if I’m looking for ski tips, I should randomly email people with Polish surnames.

I’ll get that message out right away, Wendy, even though “all is well”, because, er, we all know what THAT can mean.

It was the OTHER James Garner who had a stroke over the weekend. We wish him a speedy recovery.

(Okay, that was in bad taste, and no one was really worried about my health.)

All my life, I’ve had a relationship with James Garner. Generally favorable, although he hasn’t put much work into it. I can remember ever since kindergarten the scene of someone reading my name off a roll, and making the obligatory joke about “Maverick” (and later “Rockford”). In Kindergarten, I had no clue what was going on. But at some point, when I was nine or 10, I saw “Support Your Local Sheriff” on TV and realized who this other James Garner was. And I was pretty impressed. Effortless cool, good acting, composure, humor. And when you read more about his life, you realize what a mensch he really is. War veteran, two purple hearts, civil rights marcher, auto racer, married to the same woman for 52 years. I often joke that I could do worse than sharing my name with him, and am glad I wasn’t named James Spader or James Woods. (I knew an unfortunate guy in high school whose name was Lorne Green. C’mon, the parents have NO excuse for doing something like that.)

I wasn’t named after the actor, thankfully. I was named after my Uncle Jim, who had a pretty interesting life. He died when I was about seven, but I remember enjoying my trips to his house in Chicago, where we got to drink “50/50” and bang on his piano while his wirehair terrier Skipper barked and chased after us. He always called me “Germs,” which is the only nickname I never bridled at.

When I joined SAG/AFTRA after a couple commercials 20 years ago, I was faced with the decision of what my professional name should be. I couldn’t go by James Garner, obviously. I stuck the “Finn” in there from a family name. So my snooty literary name was actually my snooty acting name first. Thankfully for all involved, the acting didn’t go much further. About a decade ago, I received one of his royalty statements in the mail (through AFTRA maybe? I don’t remember) and sent it to him at the correct address on the letter. Didn’t get a response. Typical of our relationship. I’ve had to do all the work.

Tomorrow morning, WBEZ’s “848” show will broadcast a commentary of mine on the Chicago Children’s Museum’s efforts to get itself some prime parkland real estate. So tune in between 9 and 10 if you’ve a mind. And I presume you do.

Update: Click here for the audio link.

Steve Delahoyde ain’t got nuthin’ on these folks.

Via What Would Tyler Durden Do?

The current governor of Illinois is a puzzle. In a state where Dems control both the Senate and the General Assembly, he goes out of his way to antagonize people. The state budget has still not been worked out, yet he goes on TV and proposes new expensive initiatives. He’s even started cleansing people’s criminal records as favors to other politicians, so those people will be in his debt. Crazy? Arrogant? Contemptuous and ignorant of the law? Check and double-check.

Now he denies that he’s the “Public Official A” that has been mentioned in several Justice Dept bribery and patronage probes, Rezko and the rest. At a time when the previous governor is locked up for “pay for play” policies, Blago keeps doing it and more.

But here’s what I think is happening. You know that in some self-defense manuals, they tell you if you’re about to be mugged on the subway, to act a little kookoo and wet your pants? The theory is a mugger doesn’t want to deal with a crazy person and will just let you alone.

That’s Blago’s plan. Peeing on himself in public. Making everyone think he’s crazy (or more crazy than he’s shown before). It’s a way out of being indicted, because no one wants to see a mental defective be put on the stand for racketeering and bribery charges. It’s sort of cruel. In addition, he might take the whole state down with him, if it could sink any lower than it already is. It’s like the Mafia don who feigned craziness by walking around in his bathrobe all day talking to himself on the street.

Blago’s got more style than just wearing a bathrobe. He’s so used to pissing on colleagues and allies, not to mention citizens, that urine is his weapon of choice. The Big Dog is doing what comes naturally, except he’s doing it all over himself now. Crazy like a fox, trapped in the corner.

Camera Captures Wolverine in Sierra Nevada

I’m an inconsistent person. Usually. Maybe not all the time, but yeah, all the time. As a result, no matter how interesting or useful or well written a website might be, it’s a good bet that I forget to visit it as often as I should.

This isn’t true, however, for a community photo site I’ve found called Vintage Photographs. It has an astounding variety of old photos of every type–glamor, postcard, news events, family portraits, etc. The most intriguing lately have been many from pre-revolution Russia, showing workers at their trains, soldiers posing on their horses, families out on picnics. There’s usually no info to speak of accompanying the pictures, but just the same, each one somehow creates a narrative in my head. It’s a very intimate site, probably because of all the family pix, although many portraits of famous people are posted. Go check it out, and add it to your favorites.

Here’s one of a party in Paris in the 1920’s. The caption reads, “Russian ball at Bullier in 1929
From left to right: Iliazd, M. Gutheir, Florent Fels, Ganzo, Michonze with Iliazd’s wife, Pascin and Caridad de Laberdesque.” For all I know these are famous European intellectuals, but I don’t really care. I just dig the kooky fun they’re all having. I also wouldn’t mind meeting the brunette in the friendly pose in the lower right corner.

In case you didn’t know, it’s the Year of the Ratt.

This will be my last post for a while regarding family matters around here. I don’t want too much Hallmark sentimentality to besmirch my reputation as a clear-eyed realist with nerves of steel and sharp fingernails. But this little story really touched my heart.

Today is a snow day in Chicago, at least as far as this household is concerned, so the tension of packing up and getting out of the house is gone. Liesel is still reading in bed even now, trying to make the most of “the very first snow day I’ve ever had, and maybe ever will have.” It looks like we might have seven or eight inches by the time it’s over.

Liam was busy getting dressed in his room a few minutes ago, jamming to the songs on “Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy,” as crucial a step in his development as reading Plato and Dickens. I knocked (must respect privacy with a pre-teen!) and stuck my head in to see if he needed some prodding to get out and shovel. To my relief, he was dressed and ready to take on the job. As I retreated, I noticed something written on the inside of his bedroom door.

ABSOLUTELY
NO GIRLS ALLOWED
IN THIS ROOM !!!!!!!!!!!

This was underlined seven or eight times, and took up about three square feet of area. An understandable sentiment, one reciprocated by his sister six feet down the hall. It was cute, but I couldn’t quite make out what the message was written in. It looked like mucilage, or thick craft paint the color of amber.

I asked Liam what it was made of. He smiled, very proudly, but didn’t say anything.

I asked him again. Still smiling, he told me.

“Dried loogies.”

Put that in your scrapbook and step on it.

Here’s a snapshot that indicates where we are in the life of this household, in these times, in these here United States.

Two Saturdays ago, the kids were upstairs cleaning their rooms. Slowly and with much distraction, but that goes without saying. Liam, in seventh grade, was cranking up the copy of “Who’s Next” that he got for Christmas. It’s been amusing and incredibly nostalgic to have him playing this around the house. (It was even more evocative in December, when we played it in the car on the way to go skiing. All sorts of pictures of 1972 style–string art, big sideburns, bold wall prints, platform shoes, and ski lodge decor–swam through my head intoxicatingly. The ski lodge decor was still up at the ski hill, but everything else came from memory. And there was my kid in the back, singing a lusty version of “Bargain” and trying out some windmill guitar.) We’ve seen all sorts of attempts at teenage rebellion in recent months, more willed it seems than really intrinsically necessary. But adolescence is barreling along like a student driver, no doubt about it.

In her room, Liesel was cleaning up her dolls and singing along with a CD of “Schoolhouse Rock” in a sweet little girl’s voice. My wife must have encouraged her to play it to get some help on her multiplication tables, which are making 4th grade very trying. It was a nice innocent scene, starkly contrasted with the newfound rock decadence in the other bedroom. I could see the chasm that will inevitably grow between the brother and sister, and between the kids and their parents. While they still get along as well as brother and sister can, things will be changing soon, and there will be lots of laughs and lots of screaming and tears.

Childhood is beginning to fade away in this household, and that’s certainly okay, and in any event can’t be stopped. I enjoyed the little twinge of heartbreak I felt when I considered this scene. It made me wish for the first time that we had more than two kids, so the scene — and countless others, of bigger kids helping the younger, younger ones holding onto their youth, fear, pride, uncertainty, craziness — could be replayed a few more times.

Today Chicago’s temperature is in the single digits, the area was issued wind chill warnings overnight and today, and I’m loving it. We haven’t had a good, long, cold winter around here for 10 years or more, and it feels right. Of course, my only appointment outside today is a haircut, but I can bundle up any way I like for that. Take the hat off at the salon, hair looks like a mat of milkweed seeds, stylist tries to do something with it, pay and tip the stylist, put hat back on head, worry about how it looks sometime in April. Late April.

This is what winter should be. Bracing, dangerous, an invasion of air from the Arctic! And since that means there’s still an Arctic to send us this blast of frostbite, that’s good news for the environment, right?

This season can change so many things around us. It turned Montrose Avenue four blocks east of me into an earthquake and flood zone two mornings ago, for instance. I wrote the other day about how it has turned me into a self-righteous sourpuss (although the people who sent me comments said it just accelerated a process that began in my youth).

I don’t about my body all that much in this blog, something everyone should be happy about. I have to mention here, though, one amazing transformation that winter has brought out in me. Specifically, in my feet. Through dehydration and cold and tight bundling, the skin on my feet has dried and cracked so much that my pedal extremities look like the horns of an old buffalo. And again, I’m loving it. I feel I could walk up a wall like Spider-Man, grabbing the surface of the brick with the chitin-like tendrils of my feet. I could run across the top of a herd of sheep and never slip. I could prep a wood floor for finishing, simply by putting “Waltz of the Flowers” on the stereo, taking off my socks and pretending I was Scott Hamilton.

Somehow, I feel indebted to winter for these newfound skills. It took no effort, exercise or attention on my part to turn my feet into giant pink burrs. It happened all by itself. It’s a marvelous thing to wonder whether your socks are wearing out faster from the inside or the outside, and realize it’s Nature’s way. I feel a oneness with everything, and a kinship to our summertime buddy the cricket, as I rub the soles of my feet together and emit high-pitched scrapings that make the dog bark.

Last night’s Sugar Bowl left me torn between two extremes: Cheering for whoever plays against Ohio State (my usual position) and cheering for the Big Ten (very unpalatable when our representative is the Buckeyes). After watching the game into the third quarter, however, I decided the question was moot. There is no more mighty Big Ten to cheer for anymore, only a group of teams that tolerate cold weather and husky cheerleaders for the sure chance to head to a warm climate for a bowl game, where they invariably get mown down like a Dick Cheney quail.

What an absolutely crappy game Ohio State played. And what an absolutely predictable outcome. Any national ranking given to a Big Ten team now has the authentic ring of the valentines passed around school to every kid b/c no one should have their feelings hurt. Michigan starts out the season at #5, then loses to App State and Oregon? Illinois suffers a week of jet lag before laying down to USC? Ohio State violently chokes on two chances at the national championship? Pathetic.

The conference is the laughingstock of college football now. What was the conference’s bowl record? 3 and 6? Nine of eleven teams make it to bowl season? And finish with this record? We are the Gerry Cooneys of the college football world. How can any SEC or Pac-10 team even get excited about showing up for these things? No wonder the warm-weather conferences are pushing for a playoff system–they get tired of beating up the Big 10 and would prefer a challenge once in a while at the end of the season.

I don’t even know enough about football to make a decent argument or a useful insight here. I only know what I see during Christmas break, when I get the chance to watch a game or two. And I would suggest the conference disband and spend a few years in the wilderness, searching their souls like disgraced samurai, before they even think of showing up in the post-season again. It’s just too humiliating for alumni to watch.

My memory has been giving me trouble lately. I’d tell you how long it’s been coming up short, but I can’t even remember that. I’m talking about memories of events from my teens, twenties, thirties–basically everything up til maybe five years ago. I try to remember the details of a trip, or an old friend, or a club I used to visit a lot, and come up empty. At other times, people ask me, “Hey, remember the time…” and it sounds like they’re talking about someone else’s life. This incomplete history is especially troubling for me professionally–what’s a writer supposed to do, after all, except stitch together the fabric of old ideas and new experiences to elicit reactions in readers? At this rate, I’ll have to invent EVERYTHING I write, and not just the material that doesn’t jibe with the wild generalizations I’m making.

The last five weeks of the year, of course, are when memories become the part and parcel of all our activities. Whether embracing or running from one’s past, one can’t escape from the fact: the holiday season runs on memories. I took the family to Detroit for Thanksgiving to spend it with my mom and brother’s family. Memories good and bad sprung up constantly, all set against a background of a city I don’t recognize anymore.

This year my mom finally finished putting together a photo album for me, of childhood pictures when I was cute as a puppy’s navel to my teenage years when…words fail me. Let’s just say I wasn’t cute anymore. She included all my class group pictures from ol’ Sacred Heart Grade School on Michigan Avenue, even one from first grade. At first I could name off just about every other babyface in the collection…

Kathy O’Brien.
Charlotte Cook.
Art and Craig Champagne.
John Berchulc.

Then, an hour later, the names of the faces I’d missed started coming back to me…

Jeannie Youvon.
Sean Archer.
Bridget Ugorowski.
Bob Coy.
Gary Lesinski.

And for the next four days, names would come back to me. During the day. Middle of the night. In the middle of a conversation. Every single name, it seemed, was somewhere to be found in my neurons….

John Steslicki.
Mary Ann Mosey.
Carolyn Logue.
Lori Waldecker.
Paul Mercurio.

I haven’t tested myself against the eighth grade master photo I have packed away someplace. For more than a couple reasons, I’m scared to. With a couple of exceptions, I haven’t seen any of these people since Nixon was president, I only went on to high school with one of the 60, and I can’t really say I was friends with more than a handful. (That’s not to deny the bond that kids have in a parish school through the years.) It staggers me that the names keep bubbling up from the amber, when the rest of my memory is so balky, stubborn and incomplete. What an odd mechanism in the grey matter. How the hell does it get me through the day?