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Today’s my birthday, but I will not use this space to troll for compliments, cash or free dinner coupons (I already used one last week at Jury’s). The occasion does motivate me to list a few other notable achievements that took place today, which combined with my birthday should be all the evidence you need to quit work early today and hit Attitude Adjustment Hour at the gin mill of your choice:

* The birthdays of Ingrid Bergman, Charlie “Bird” Parker, Elliott Gould, Peter Jennings and Michael Jackson.
* Fall of the Incan Empire (1533) and the old Soviet Communist Party (1991)
* According to Hoyle Day! Edmond Hoyle’s Short Treatise on whist was published in 1742.
* The invention of Chop Suey in NYC in 1896.
* National Plastic Surgery Day!

We are now back in town, and as Number One Son headed off for school this morning, summer is officially over. It was full and hectic, and we capped it off with a seat-of-the-pants, hey-let’s-visit-the-Mystery-Spot road trip to the Boundary Waters in Minnesota, so around here it really feels like it’s still early July. I was emptying a drawer and found the Fathers Day cards the kids had made me, and I had to think back to when that all happened. Now it’s back to the regular routines in Chicago, and it almost feels like we never left.

Here’s an unofficial recap of the trip:

Best city name we passed through: Herbster, WI.
Second place: Bete Grise, MI
Best breakfast place: The Tossed Egg, Bayfield, WI (their Bay Omelette was stuffed with smoked lake trout, onions, tomatoes, spinach and Parmesan cheese. Yowzah!)
Best sweet rolls and cherry pie: The Cherry Spot, Beulah, MI
Best Polish food: Legs Inn, Cross Junction, MI
Biggest forest fire: Stump Junction, MI
Best massive concrete bluegill: Orr, MN
Prettiest campsite: Fort Wilkins, MI, at the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula
Best lake name near that campsite: Lake Fanny Hooe
Best pasty: Muldoon’s, Munising, MI
Best juxtaposition on store sign: “Wild Rice & Lobster Tails”, Superior WI
Best ripoff casino act advertised: “Shania Twin”

And the best time overall was visiting our friends’ cabin on Lake Vermilion in MN. Look for it on a map–it’s WAY the hell up there. We heard loons morning and night, saw eagles and ospreys, sailed, napped, and took REALLY hot saunas. And I taught my host to play cribbage finally, so he can fit in with the guys over at the supper club. (As happens with all my students, he started beating me regularly.) Coming back from there was quite a culture shock. Chicago looks awful crowded by comparison. Then again, Fennville MI felt awfully crowded once we got back there. Would love to visit up there every summer, but I should check that with them first.

A whole pile of articles and essays crossed my path this summer about the decline of the American Vacation. How nobody takes road trips, how they resent taking time off, how families resent spending forced time together, etc. Maybe that’s standard magazine filler at this time of year, I don’t know, but they began to piss me off pretty quickly. In June, Newsweek ran an especially stupid essay by a mom in Jersey complaining about how their road trip was ruined because her kids were all hooked into their cellphones and ipods. It was some faux-exasperated, kids-these-days-but gee-we-came-together-anyway claptrap that was especially suspect when the writer admitted to checking her emails on her laptop a couple times a day in the car. Hey Chowderhead! Leave your laptop at home, and maybe your kids will talk to you!

On our trip we drove 2400 miles, and the most complicated electronic device we had was the car CD player. (We did have our cells along, but as if unplugged by some benevolent vacation god, the voice mail didn’t work once we drove over the Mackinac Bridge, and we gradually just stopped thinking about them.) Our kids read, drew, laced gimp, and played cards the whole way up and back. No movies, no Gameboys, no nothing. Their greatest fun was memorizing the songs on the CD by Da Yoopers we bought at their Toorist Trap in Ishpeming, with such hits as “Second Week of Deer Camp”, “Beer Guts of America” and “Diarrhea”. And by the time we got back here, this family was one well-functioning machine–with the kids helping around the house, being courteous to one another, and all that stuff that people say they’d like their kids to be but don’t take the time to teach them.

So enough with the insincere crap about how you miss the kinds of road trips you used to take when you were a kid, because Today’s Kidz just won’t stand for aimless hours in the car and tourist traps anymore. If you really want to take those trips, do the planning and teach your kids early not to depend on electronics and movies to entertain them. Teach them to set up their own tent, and suffer through a chilly morning in camp once in a while. Read books out loud to each other in the car. You’d be amazed how quickly all the “necessities” of modern life just drop by the wayside.

Fun with the relatives.

At some time in 2006, my ISP lost a few months worth of my posts, and me, being the self-lacerating type, thought that the big gap in posting was entirely my doing. When I realized that I had actually been posting intermittently from May to September, it was too late, and the posts were gone for good. And probably, for the good of us all.

But I remember one post, because it was an essay that is still up on another site. Coudal Partners, a design and web firm in Chicago, had a project going called “Field-Tested Books,” in which writers penned small essays describing an indelible link between a certain book and a place. It’s a great project to poke around in, so go to the site and check it out. I was flattered to be included, and so I wrote about the connection I feel between my cottage and a certain collection:

A TREASURY OF DAMON RUNYON

Summer reading should be, by definition, that which Fall-Winter-Spring reading is not. And since my cold weather reading tends toward the current, the now, the wow-pow!, I set aside Summer to enjoy the things no one is talking about. At my family cottage I have a personal rule to read only books more than 50 years old. In this way, modern novelists and their narcissistic obsessions get the heave-ho, and I can enjoy stories from Twain, Dickens, London, Chesterton – hell, even Beowulf – that would otherwise get stacked in the pile of good intentions.

A couple of years ago at a book sale near the cottage, I found a copy of the Modern Library edition of Damon Runyon’s collected stories. If anyone remembers Runyon now, it’s because of Guys and Dolls, which adapted his yarns of mobsters, strippers, and tough eggs for the stage. His writing, I think, is a snapshot of style bordering on comic genius; at least there’s been no one like him before or since. Runyon writes strictly in the present tense, with no contractions and a cadence that sounds like feet scuttling hastily through a back exit. His narrative voice has influenced gangster-speak to the present day. Joe Pesci’s “I’m funny how?” speech in Goodfellas and the best dialog from The Sopranos would not exist without Runyon’s inspiration.

Runyon reportedly preferred his later, bucolic stories about small-town life in the Colorado of his youth, but these are tiresome “more than somewhat” when compared to tales of Harry the Horse, Blooch Bodinski and Nicely-Nicely Jones. The plots twist enough to please but not enough to vex, which is important in the evening after a glass or two of Canadian Club. These stories of thieves, grifters and racketeers carry a special tonic for a visitor in this part of Michigan, which was settled by Dutch Calvinists whose idea of a good time is a hard day’s work. Like P.G. Wodehouse’s, Runyon’s stories feel like a blip in time, profiles of a moment that had passed by the time they were first published, if it ever existed at all. If summer days can be well spent relaxing in the shade with Bertie Wooster and his Aunt Agatha, then the nights belong to the idle denizens of Mindy’s Restaurant, the Golden Slipper Nightclub, and “the racetrack at Saratoga, which is a spot in New York state very pleasant to behold.”

It’s summertime, so that means it’s time for Ferris wheels, junk food and carnies—in other words, the county fair. Yesterday we went with our German visitors to the Ottawa (Mich.) County Fair, to give them a taste of good ol’ American wholesomeness. In fact, it was very wholesome—so wholesome, in fact, that it wasn’t very interesting. Maybe at night the carnies get a little more loud and lascivious, and the teenagers and rednecks get a little more reckless. I certainly hope so, cuz it was just a little too sedate for me.

(Last summer on our trip to Germany, these friends had taken us on a surprise trip to the Circus Roncalli, a fabulous one-ring circus with its HQ in their hometown. We had the most fantastic time, and I was hoping that this county fair would at least be as diverting. No such luck.)

The big event that our kids wanted to join in was The Money Booth, one of those phone-booth sized Plexiglas boxes with fans in the floor into which cash is poured and people get in to grab as much flying money as they can in 15 seconds. We signed up early, then waited and waited for one of our names to be called. While more than 50 kids eventually got to grab some cash, our names were never pulled from the bucket. It struck some doubt into my kids’ faith into the splashover of the free enterprise system. But shove some elephant ears in them and they were fine again.

The other kids were just as rabid to stick it out in the blazing sun for their chance to grab a free $6. Hey, they were Dutch-Americans, which means for free money – or free anything – they’d sit on a nest of fire ants waiting their turn. And holy moley, the NAMES these kids have been burdened with! I lost track of the Tylers and the Taylors and the Brodys among these little suburban urchins. Might parents be naming their kids after their favorite taverns? Not in this dry neck of the woods. One little girl was named Brooklyn, apparently being groomed by her parents for a prizefighting career. And two different boys were named Stone. What the hell is up with that? Are the parents big fans of NBC News? Are they afraid any less sturdy names will mean their boy will turn gay? Do they get their inspiration for baby names at the building center? That would explain little brother Caulk and little sister Sheetrock. These people must be watching a lot of television that I’m not, considering how exotic yet generic their kids names sound.

I remember hearing about a mother some years ago looking up her child’s name in one of those reference books to find out what it really means etymologically. Imagine her disappointment to find that the name Tyler, which sounds so classy and Ivy League, actually means “a laborer who installs tiles.” No, no, how will he ever marry a Rockefeller now?

A friend heard the tail-end of my interview on WBEZ some weeks ago, and sent the message:

A much welcome break from the pledge drive (though that is doing you an injustice — the sound of cicadas boffing would be a pleasant break from the pledge drive. You were much better than cicadas boffing.)

JFG: “Much Better Than Cicadas Boffing.”

This morning WBEZ-FM will run an interview they did with me a couple weeks ago, regarding Recut Madness and various and sundry matters. So tune in to “848” at 9 am, or listen for the rebroadcast in the evening, or listen to it online. Whatever you do, don’t miss it or you’ll miss a clue about where I’ve hidden all of Joey The Clown’s loot.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the program, where you can find the MP3.

What’s with this stupid beanbag game I keep seeing? This weekend we drove by three different places where young guys were barbecuing and drinking beer on the stoop, and they all were tossing their beanbags at a piece of plywood with cut-out holes. (Except for a group near DePaul, who my wife pointed out were playing Toss-Across. The leaders of tomorrow apparently feel the need for the greater challenge of long-distance tic-tac-toe.) It’s starting to look like Romper Room with Leinenkugels out there.

Apparently this is a big pastime with Bears tailgators, while they hang around drinking schnapps on Sunday morning. Okay, maybe there’s not a lot to do in a parking lot in November for a couple hours before they open the turnstiles for you, so you get this thing out to play toss around, and maybe the beanbags are soft enough that when some boozer gets out of control, he doesn’t injure anyone with an errant toss. That I can understand. (Also, the fact that it doesn’t take a whole lot to amuse football fans.) But why in the name of Leon’s Barbecue would you do this in your own backyard? Is the art of conversation COMPLETELY dead and buried now? Are black-market Jarts too hard to find? Does Horseshoes require too much training and conditioning?

If you’re REALLY that hard up for something to do while waiting for the coals to heat up, may I suggest something in a more classic vein, like Russian Roulette?

I got word yesterday that the “Talk of the Nation” interview that got bounced around last week is officially dead. It appears that, even though I did a boffo pre-interview and had the exec producer’s OK, the host finally took a look at the book and decided he wasn’t interested. Which stinks, since they had insisted on being the first interview for the new book. Not very professional of them, so next time you phone in to their show, make sure you just give them a Bronx cheer and then hang up. That’ll learn ’em.

But there is better news on the horizon. Today I did a kick-ass interview with Steve Edwards of WBEZ’s “Eight Forty-Eight” show, and they should be able to edit out my pauses and coughs by sometime next week. Real professional place, that WBEZ. Thanks Steve–that order of smoked lake trout is on the way.

And here’s something even cooler: I should have a post up in the next 24 hours on The Huffington Post! Keep an eye out for my balding head and snarky expression on that site. They even asked me whether this was a one-time thing, or would I like to be a regular contributor. Let’s see: They don’t pay, but they get six million hits a day. Hmmmm…..decisions, decisions.

My appearance on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” tomorrow has been postponed to an indeterminate date. Apparently the host hadn’t had enough time to read the book. Now, I thought NPR was more on the ball, but I have mixed feelings about it. At least it shows that maybe the host will be prepared for the show.

That’s always a gamble when you’re out flogging a book. You don’t know what it’s like to bite your tongue when some morning deejay holds your book in the air and says something like “I haven’t had a chance to look at it, but I’m sure it’s great–I only wish I’d written it.” And all that goes through your mind is, “You unemployable gasbag, you’re on the air three hours a day, which includes commercials, and you have interns and assistants who open your mail and answer your phone. And you didn’t bother to even crack my book, which is all of 150 pages, which may be intimidating to even such a voracious intellect as yourself, but you didn’t bother to take the damn thing out of the envelope, and you’re telling me that you think you should write books now, too? Is there a special holding tank for people like you? Do they let you out of the building unescorted? Do the authorities let you drive unsupervised?”

This is never the case with NPR, of course, as this postponement obviously shows. I love those guys to death. And at least their listeners buy books, unlike the Morning Madhouse type crews. Man, they crazy.

Whenever there’s news, I’ll post it here.

For those of you who are near a radio in the afternoon, tune in to NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” this Thursday at 3:45 Eastern time. I’ll be on flogging the new book (Recut Madness, which should be on shelves everywhere now) and ladling out the charm like canned gravy.

Remember. Thursday. 3:45 pm Eastern. “Talk of the Nation.”

And make sure you keep talkin’.

I have just been informed by a friend with impeccable academic credentials that this Sunday morning, at 3 minutes and 4 seconds after 2 A.M. , the time and date will be:

02: 03: 04/ 05. 06. 07

Cosmic coincidence? Hardly. Get ready for an invasion of three-eyed alien dames carrying old camera bulbs.

Thanks Pete Tiglechaar