Best-Selling Humorist.
While I never got to see Mark Nutter in his heyday with Friends of the Zoo in the 1980s, the review of his songs from their shows–“Oh My–NUTS!”–was beyond a doubt the single funniest show I’ve ever seen. Painfully funny, gasping for breath with headache funny.
Now Mark has been recording and performing more. And Western Civilization is the better for it.
He’s right about those baby lovers, you know.
Some months ago, a friend told me about a reading series in Wrigleyville called the Lovable Losers Literary Revue. Looking to expand the audience for Bardball, I went to one of the readings and got friendly with the organizer, Don Evans. He asked me to do a reading. Cool, I did one in September. He wanted to include my stuff in an anthology he was putting together with a local publisher. Fine, great. I was just looking for exposure, to be honest, and didn’t know what to expect from the project, if anything.
Last Friday, I got an email from Don, containing the pdf file of the page proofs for that anthology, Cubbie Blues. And I have to say, I got an electric charge of excitement from them. For one thing, the book looks very good, with terrific illustrations, from Tim Souers of Cubby-Blue and Margie Lawrence, among others.
For another, I’m with some very good company. Big name writers like Rick Kogan, Jonathan Eig (perzunalfrenofmine), Stu Shea (alzoperzunalfrenofmine), WXRT’s Lin Brehmer, Don DeGrazia, Scott Simon. Also writers I don’t know yet, but hope to meet in the future. It’s a fun grab bag of people united by an enduring love for the Cubs, and therefore attuned to the futility of hope and human existence.
But mainly, it’s incredibly exhilarating to receive a copy of nice clean pages, all laid out with printers crop marks, and realize that this is the last stage before the book actually making it into people’s hands. Privileged information, “eyes only,” a secret stash between me and the other writers, the editor and the publisher. It’s like having a good poker hand, and the feeling of anticipation before laying the cards down. I get to enjoy it all to myself (sort of) until signing off on it. (That’s another feeling entirely, as it goes to press, mostly a flickering hope with a heaping helping of dread, and the urge to start reading the Jobs section.)
This also gives me the chance to put on my editor’s cap, albeit in a small way. I won’t change any copy, since it’s already gone through other people’s hands. Besides, it’s an anthology, and Don has already done the heavy lifting of soliciting and stroking the writers, and psychological surgery of getting them to agree to changes. I only have to check for style and punctuation. It sounds nerdy, but I like doing it. I like to help make the thing perfect, or as close as we can come. One error I already found in the MS was a little thing, a hyphen inserted where an em-dash was clearly needed. Minor? Not really. With an em-dash, the sentence reads “hard job for which I have no stomach–finding readers.” A hyphen creates the adjective “stomach-finding”, which has a lot of grisly resonance at Halloween time.
My first publishing job was working on journals for a professional association of real estate appraisers. It was less exciting than it sounds, if you can believe that. My boss there was a great editor, though, and his boss was even better. They taught me a lot about clear writing, clear punctuation, clear structure–because when you need to edit an article about how to calculate the market value of an empty slaughterhouse, you need to find some way to make it read well. And that’s the feeling I get when I receive page proofs. I’m just disappointed it’s a pdf file and not paper. I’ve got a lot of big fat blue pencils just dying of loneliness.
So, honestly, which is more degrading, Sarah Palin’s appearance on “Saturday Night Live” or the fact that a porn movie entitled “Nailin’ Palin” has already been produced?
Having only seen one of them, I’d vote for the former. At least there is no subtext in the porno, no attempt at ingratiation, no fake grins, only fake grimaces of unbelievable physical ecstasy. And it is apparent who’s screwing who, at least as far as I know, never having seen the spanking vid, I promise.
Palin’s keepers, apparently, believe that any exposure SHORT of a porno is a good thing. Except of course, holding a press conference or something like that. Who wants to see THAT? A far better idea would be to have her appear on a show that routinely savages her and her “core constituents” (Somehow that sounds like a good porn title too, if esoteric). Put her on the show, have a leering Alec Baldwin turn her into a sex object, let Tina Fey scoot offstage unscathed after spending a month mocking her, and sit at the Weekend Update desk trying to look “down widdit” as Amy Poehler chanted a mundane rap making fun of every bit of Palin’s “real America” biography.
Yep, a great plan. Apparently there’s no such thing as bad exposure.
Or wait. Was she slyly entering the den of the smarty-pants elite, enduring their slings and arrows, and emerging more statesman-like than ever before?
Yeah, THAT must’ve been the master plan. Now the red-meaters can really scream about how she gets no respect, and how NYC isn’t the real America! Watch this week, as Palin turns around and announces that she had a lousy time making fun of her image, that she couldn’t wait to get out of that liberal hell-hole and get back with people who know right from wrong and don’t make jokes about things!! People who have no sense of humor at all! Yew makin’ some kinda joke, boy? Well, that aint the way we do things round here.
For two weeks now, my laptop has been acting like it belongs in a retirement community. Slow moving, unresponsive, can’t stand to play videos or music (“It’s all just NOISE.”). So I was faced with the prospect of buying a new one, having to run Windows Vista and replacing what has become an extension of myself (I know there are geekier people out there who can say Amen.) with something either flashy and expensive, or shabbily assembled. (An aside to Toshiba: Whoever thought of making every surface of your laptops glossy, including the keyboard, should be out of a job. My thoughts are dirty enough; I don’t need to work on a laptop that shows every smudge and fingerprint.)
Luckily, we still have a retail computer store in Chicago, and one of the salesman casually mentioned that my problem sounded like a defective hard drive. If I wanted to get all Handy Andy, I could buy a new one for $80, and if it didn’t work, I could apply that cost to a new computer.
Hey, you don’t have to ask me twice. It took me more time to watch a handheld video of a teenager replacing the HD in his VAIO with one hand than it did to install. How’s that for DIY geekery? Small potatoes, I realize, but it’s the kind of thing our thrifty forefathers would’ve appreciated.
Now I’ve regained the power to waste half my day watching videos and browsing websites about the election. Can it really be only 19 days away?? Say it ain’t so! What will we do without it? Where else can we find so much self-generating entertainment? The desperation, the slander, the anger, the schadenfreude–it’s going to be a long, lonely winter when Obama wins and we have nothing left to look forward to except rebuilding the economy of the world (let alone Iraq and Afghanistan).
I’ll accept that outcome, of course, even though I predict it will be slim pickins for comedians and satirists in an Obama administration. Sober, thoughtful and level-headed–looks like a arid wasteland to me. Better start working on comic light verse. Oh wait, I already am. Oh well, the local political scene is a complete dog’s breakfast, so there’s that consolation.
I don’t put much credence in polls, especially this year. I’m certain more people have been saying they’ll vote for Obama than actually will, but not enough to tip things toward McCain. My guess is Obama will take 55-60% of the vote, and will have a momentous victory in the Electoral College. I have never thought of attending a party for election night coverage, but this year, it’s tempting. It will be as close to a landslide as I’ll probably see in my lifetime. And justifiably so. After eight years of the Bush Administration (don’t think back to it–it will boggle your mind), we need to purge our systems of the fear, the hate, the culture warfare, the dessication of the economy, the complete and utter failure of everything W and his henchmen have touched. Remember Ford’s phrase, “Our long national nightmare is over”? Well, almost, Gerry, but October’s only half over. Still plenty of time for Bush to declare martial law because Iceland’s attacking.
But the campaign? I’ll miss it. It’s been such a joy to watch the Republicans and the conservative movement flail and sputter and wallow in the shit they’ve been cultivating for so long. Obama has actually turned into a colossal bore, but how could he keep up with the McCain-Palin Show? Come January, the right-wing screeds will have all the substance of sea foam. Truthiness will recede, but not disappear. Obama’s plans will be derided as socialism, as if the economic bailout endorsed by both parties isn’t. We won’t have the money to enact most of his plans anyway. Expect dim job growth, melting ice caps, deteriorating infrastructure–and from the right, a lot of screaming about gay test tube babies and marauding Mexican zombies.
Comic high notes like the Couric-Palin interview? We’ll have to savor them like a Frank Sinatra song, because we won’t see the likes of them again.
Some few, last, rambling observations on the Cubs and White Sox:
–It remains a mystery to me why the Cubs had a Greek Orthodox priest sprinkle the dugout with holy water before the playoff series. Was it because the Billy Goat curse was laid on the team by a Greek tavern owner, Sam Sianis? Were they chosen in a round robin, like having different clerics open council meetings with prayer? My good friend U-Boat, the West Coast’s go-to atheist, suggested that
Wouldn’t it be funny if, after years of systematically sprinkling holy something-or-others from all the world’s great religions, some really obscure religion turned it around for the Cubs?
Jainists Claim World Series for Cubs!
Or, they could just swing the bats once in a while…
U-Boat doesn’t want to entertain the idea that, if the Cubs do eventually win it, the sprinkling denomination will have bragging rights, if not complete legitimization as the one true voice of the Almighty. Great PR.
–Speaking of things spiritual, it occurred to me that this year’s White Sox team may have gotten where they are by selling their souls to the devil. However, the devil repackaged those deeds and sold them on the secondary market, where they’ve infected the balance sheets of many large lenders. The Sox, meanwhile, are left with no championship and a mighty tenuous story come judgment day.
–I loved the effect of the Sox blackout. Let’s hope the fans aren’t asked to overdo it and wear all black, say, in a Cubs midseason series. Much more effective to keep it in reserve for post-season play. Not that marketing depts. have much use for showing any reserve.
–it was good to see some young kids in attendance at both Comiskey Park and Tropicana Field, because marketers tell us that kids have lots more disposable income these days, so their spending decisions could have importance for the teams’ futures. Quite a different picture than I saw at the closing game at Yankee Stadium. Who’s going to waste their $500 ticket on a kid when they have to bring a client? The television cameras found one or two kids at the end and lingered over them as if they were the witnesses to the end of an era, when really they just wanted to go home and go to bed.
–As far-fetched as it might’ve been, I was really pulling for a Subway Series here in Chicago. The stories of carnage and mayhem, of families and marriages ripped apart, of class warfare and new lifelong hatreds, would’ve made for wonderful reading. New York has had a number of crosstown series, and the Giants and A’s played one back in 1989. Maybe one will happen during my lifetime.
–One trouble with TIVOing the games and zipping through them later is not being able to listen to the regular radio announcers call the game. They are infinitely more knowledgeable than the national broadcasters (well, three out of four are, while Santo grunts like a caveman). One friend of mine will only watch Bears games with the sound off while listening to the play-by-play announcers, which I think is a fine idea.
–One good point about the Cubs losing is that they retain their loveability. That’s one thing the Red Sox lost when they finally won the World Series, as Boston native Pat Borelli explains in today’s Tribune.
And if John Cheever really believed “All men of letters are Red Sox fans,” then it’s one more good reason to stay away from New England in the winter. They drink too much up there, apparently.
–And Alphonso Soriano (zip for bupkus in the last two post-season series) weighs in with an opinion that no one wants to hear, as it comes from him:
“We’re a very good team for [162] games, but we don’t do nothing after that,” he said. “That’s the difference. We’re not put together for [a short series].”
Boy, that must be the secret of baseball, right? Ignore most of the season and build a team that can win in a short series.
That only works for basketball, Fonzie.
Oh, BTW, you suck.
I didn’t know watching TV could be so exhausting until this morning. I guess watching the Sox lose, the Veep Debate, and the Cubs lose can really take it out of a couch potato.
Diminished expectations were the theme running through these three events. I thought the Sox played better than the Cubs, and the fact that no one believes the Sox are going far in to the playoffs makes watching them play a little sweeter. The Cubs, as presumptive World Series participants, were exasperating with their errors and their whiffs. With their wide swings in the dirt, the heavy hitters (D-Lee in particular) looked like they were hoeing a garden. We are expecting a lot more from the Cubs, and watching them play like Little Leaguers is a new level of depression.
The expectations were low for Sarah Palin going into the debate, so the fact that she could pronounce Achmedinajad (but not “nuclear”) made her this year’s Stephen Douglas, at least among right-wingers. I was disappointed but not surprised it wasn’t a bloodbath. Ya, you betcha I was. But her answers were so vacuous, she seemed like a customer service supervisor who could spout all kinds of nonsense but still not get me what I want. Biden in contrast was sober, smart, and experienced, but what does that count against charisma?
I watched the CNN broadcast, and so got to watch the little EKG meter at the bottom which bumped up and down from the reactions of undecided Ohio voters twisting little knobs somewhere in Chillicothe. As much as we mocked the gimmick, throughout the night, my wife and I couldn’t take our eyes off it. The blips actually revealed a few interesting things, like everyone agreed with Biden’s comment that Dick Cheney is the most dangerous elected official in America (big spikes there), the govt needs to have more diplomacy and engagement, and the country should lead UN troops into Darfur. Toward the end of the debate, when Biden was explicit in his foreign policy opinions and Palin sounded like the Chamber of Commerce booster she is, her nonanswers failed to get the EKG to move beyond tepid. But that and $3.95 will get you a cup of coffee.
I hope the Cubs, Sox and Palin can hang on just long enough to keep us entertained this month. For one thing, we’ve got a lot of poems in the queue at Bardball. Today we posted a video from Tom Latourette, which is funny, cruel and timely:
So Ryan Dempster got a case of the jumps last night and couldn’t keep the ball anywhere near the strike zone, and the Cubs lost to the Dodgers. Hey, it happens. That’s why it’s called a sport. It was a lackluster showing, but the Cubs have too much talent to go quietly (knock wood). I’m looking forward to Dempster pitching again and kicking ass (don’t ask me about Ted Lilly).
But what pissed me off so much more than the loss was watching the po-faced Cub fans in the stands. My gosh, people, you were a disgrace! Watching it on TV was like watching a class in macroeconomics–I expect more catcalling at tonight’s veep debate!
In the fourth, when Dempster was getting behind the batters, you all got on your feet, but did any of you cheer your support? No, you held your breath and crossed your fingers like a bunch of third graders! Don’t you think Dempster would’ve like a little encouragement? He had Manny Ramirez down 0-2, and none of you made a peep! And don’t say it was because the network didn’t have enough mikes on the crowd. We could see you behind home plate, with worried looks on your faces, waiting for yet another smack in the face from Destiny.
Do you think the Sox fans would have been so quiet? Do you? They made a hell of a lot of noise during their do-or-die games this week, screaming and waving those black towels. They WANT the Sox to win. They don’t feel like the Sox OWE them anything except to play their best and give them a few thrills.
You Cub fans looked like a bunch of ninnies, like kids praying for Santa but worried he’s going to come home drunk again and start peeing on the Christmas tree. You were a disgrace to the city. A spineless, superstitious, crybaby disgrace.
The next time someone brings out the old cliche that fans on the South Side are more knowledgeable about baseball, and that North Siders just want a good time at the park, I’m going to point to last night’s game and agree wholeheartedly.
Defeating the Twins isn’t easy
In that convention hall they call a dome,
But who could foresee the series would be
Like the Vandals’ destructions of Rome?
The White Sox wasted the season.
The grinders’ swings turned to hacks.
So thoroughly owned were the Sox, they’re showin’
Herm Schneider rug burns on their backs.
Now the players can mutter and grumble
While the Cubs are showered with cheers.
A subway series? Not this time, dearies.
Check back in another 100 years.
All but the hardest of baseball die-hards can be forgiven for forgetting that today is the 100th anniversary of “Merkle’s Boner,” one of the most infamous mistakes in the history of the sport. Today’s Tribune has a nice story by Ed Sherman about Fred Merkle, the 19-year-old rookie for the NY Giants who made a technical gaffe in baserunning during a game against the Chicago Cubs and was vilified throughout NY for years after. You know it’s bad when your name enters the lexicon as a joke (to “merkle” for a short time meant to fail to show up at an appointment). Sherman’s article says that all was forgiven when the Giants invited Merkle back to an old-timers’ game…in 1950. Yep, after 42 years, everyone was willing to forgive and forget. Way to go, New Yorkers! Who says you have no hearts?
And whether it’s a coincidence or not, the Macarthur Foundation has announced the recipients of their “Genius Awards” for 2008. If you didn’t get notification in the mail, don’t bother to call their HQ–you didn’t win, again. Among the luminaries of the fellowships this year are a geomorphologist, an optical physicist, a plant evolutionary geneticist….and a fiber artist.
Yep, that’s right, a fiber artist. According to the Macarthur website:
Mary Jackson is a fiber artist whose intricately coiled vessels preserve the centuries-old craft of sweetgrass basketry and push the tradition in stunning new directions.
So if you were in the market for some sweetgrass basketry, be warned, the price just shot up.
We had a circus. Nyah nyah.
The Midnight Circus is one of Chicago’s cultural gems, a gritty little troupe with sass and skill and a very light heart. And they practice less than two blocks from me. The leaders of the troupe live around the corner. I always find myself peeking in their window to see if they’re doing anything cool, like hanging off the chandelier, but they seem mostly to be watching TV when I’m out walking the dog. Odd, yet mysterious.
Here’s a few of the pics I clicked:
It’s hard to see, but in the last picture, the contortionist has gotten himself stuck in a stringless tennis racket, but he eventually puts his whole body through it. You can see part of the racket, the red object by his crotch.
It doesn’t get any better than a circus in your neighborhood park.
If today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, (and it BE, bucko), then I think Monday should be National Talk Like A Veep Candidate Day.
There is something very soothing about adopting a sort of Scandinavian, Minnesotan, Yooper, Alaskan accent. It’s really hard to think badly about your lot in life when sounding out those long OOOOs and sharp EYEs, and speaking in the little lilt that you might use in front of a Sunday School class (when you weren’t asking them to pray the gay away). It’s like a lullaby. There may be something hard-wired about it in our brain’s box, like a prosaic version of a meditative Om. Remember Steve Martin’s old bit about banjo playing, and how everyone should be issued a banjo because it just makes bad news sound good to hear it mixed with that twangy sound? This is the same thing.
Hey, maybe that’s what the Treasury Department ought to do. Instead of guaranteeing a bunch of crappy mortgages and banning short-selling on financial stocks–wow, how pointy headed is that?–they should just issue banjos to everyone, domestically AND internationally. That would stop the whining, eh? Make Wall Street into the biggest hoedown outside Branson, and the markets would just overdose on optimism.
And this follow up, from a Minnesota mom who knows the breed:
Real Hockey moms are out of control maniacs. The kind who would poison your kid so hers could play. Would lie to you about the location of the 5:30 a.m. practice just so your kid wouldn’t get the ice time. They’d mortgage the house with a subprime lender to send the kid to hockey camp up in Bemidji. She’d instruct her kid how to best inflict lasting damage with the stick that wouldn’t be seen by the officials. Beat them senseless if they didn’t win. Bribe the officials. Trash talk the better players on the team.
Anyone who prides themselves on being a hockey mom is counting on the rest of the nation thinking like it’s a soccer mom on ice. Nothing could be further from the truth. Think Texas raving lunatic cheerleader moms – you’ll then be getting the right idea.
I shudder at the thought.
Sounds more like Dick Cheney everyday.
Today thee different stories are on my mind, one of personal importance, one of artistic, and one of global.
First, my back and glutes are absolutely killing me today after eight hours Sunday of bailing out our basement and hauling out wet carpet. The record rainfall of Saturday raised the water level all around Chicago, and in my house, it found the seam between the old and new foundations and dribbled in like the subtle wall fountain in a classy sushi joint. It wasn’t much compared with the flooding that other neighborhoods around here suffered, which was remarkable, but still a drag. (There are times when the news will show footage of volunteers helping to sandbag when the Mississippi runs to flood stage, and the little self-deluding part of my brain says, “Yeah, I should gather the brood up in the station wagon and go help those people.” And so, my capacity for empathy fills my heart. If the pain in my back is any indication, a trip like that is never going to happen. Sorry, riverbank dwellers.)
Second, I was shocked to read of the suicide of David Foster Wallace over the weekend. I was also shocked to read that he was younger than me. I’ve only read his shorter pieces, intimidated by Infinite Jest’s length and apparent position in the modern canon. And frankly, I was professionally jealous and fearful. What if it was as good as everyone always said? How insecure would it have made a glorified gag writer like me, who still aspires to write something with at least a little intellectual heft behind it? Can professional jealousy exist beyond the grave? We’ll find out, if I ever get around to reading DFW’s opus. At least now, I still have the chance to work to overtake him, an advantage he ceded when he hanged himself. (Just being honest here. The news was sad, but since I didn’t know the guy, it was only sad-puzzling, not sad-grievous.)
And finally, the implosion of the financial services sector this weekend makes me wonder why the hell the Obama campaign doesn’t just hammer McCain on economic policies. I know the average voter doesn’t care or much understand what Wall Street does, but that doesn’t mean they don’t feel the uncertainty in the air. Saying “the fundamentals of our economy are strong,” as McCain did this morning, would look disingenuous when coming from someone already in office. To say it as the candidate for president is positively delusional. It makes him look like a shill for the White House, which his current position basically forces him to be. There’s no way to escape that he’s the continuation (at least in the short term) of current policies. He’s already said he doesn’t know anything about the economy, and as a Republican, he certainly isn’t going to push for more regulation in the financial markets. I don’t know how much about economics Obama knows either, frankly, but it’s time to knock McCain down hard. My free advice, BO.
I’m not going to spend much time ruminating on the Alaskan Pork Queen in the next few weeks. Every revelation about her bullying governing style and ability to lie to thousands of people several times a day are entertaining, but ultimately they’re water off a loon’s back. New items about her policies and actions (like today’s jaw-dropper that the town of Wasilla actually forced rape victims to pony up cash to have forensic tests done) will do nothing to dissuade her ardent fans. When confronted with tough questions, she’ll probably just call off all press conferences, wrap herself up in her mackinaw and go a-huntin’.
That’s fair warning to all the wildlife in the Northwest: when new scandals come to light about Palin’s record, HIDE!
Hey, she’s a liar and a self-promoting grandstander, just like the “reformer” governor here in Illinois (thankfully, no one except Blagojevich himself is desperate enough to suggest that he should run for higher office). There’s the exotic element of fjords, elk and oil money in the background, a picture postcard that is wrenched from the mind when she unleashes her most destructive weapon: Her metal-piercing voice.
What I find more interesting is WHY people would be interested in her at all. Anyone in America can be president, which we’ve proven time and again to our dismay. But why (other than venal self-interest that Republicans should rule forever and always) would any voter fall for this schtick of the frost-bitten, gun-totin’ maverick? In the face of the objective facts that she’s held state office for less than two years, will lie out of both sides of her mouth and managed to sink her little town into a $23 million debt, why would anyone with more than a room-temperature IQ think that she’s fit to be second in line for the most powerful office on earth?
Roger Ebert considered that in today’s Sun-Times, and as you’d expect, cuts to the heart of the matter with style:
She’s the “American Idol” candidate. Consider. What defines an “American Idol” finalist? They’re good-looking, work well on television, have a sunny personality, are fierce competitors, and so talented, why, they’re darned near the real thing. There’s a reason “American Idol” gets such high ratings. People identify with the contestants. They think, Hey, that could be me up there on that show!
Read the rest of his column here.