Best-Selling Humorist.
Our neighbors to the south will soon be wreaking havoc in our labor pool again. With the CIA tied up in the Middle East, who is going to take on the job of overthrowing the presidents of Venezuela, Bolivia and who knows who else in the years to come?
One more example of how the current administration doesn’t care about American workers….
Not many people outside the Midwest might care, but this Christmas season will be the last one for the name Marshall Field’s, which was purchased last summer by the gimps who own Macy’s. Apparently, they think the name Macy’s translates into “fine quality merchandise” rather than “run-of-the-mill crap for sale in a bus-station atmosphere”, so the Marshall Field’s nameplates will be replaced next year.
Plenty of people have gotten all sticky sweet about it, so I won’t tell you my childhood memories of getting their catalog in the mail in the 1960s, back before all stores basically carried the same toys, and marvelling at what an absolute heaven it must have been to live in Chicago (when I was growing up in a Detroit suburb) and have access to all those marvelous playthings. Won’t waste your time. And it was a big catalog, too.
But I do think the name change is ridiculous, one more instance of the homogenization of America. Go here to read my editorial on the subject, which never found a home in the local newspapers. And if you’d like to sign the online petition on the name change, go here. It might make you feel good, but it ain’t gonna do much else.
In my neighborhood, we’re mercifully spared from most chain stores and restaurants, aside from a McDonald’s and a Starbucks, that have have turned America into one big pile of mediocrity. If I want a hot sub sandwich for lunch, I can walk to four different places, every one of which is locally owned. But I know this is the exception rather than the rule.
When we travelled through Fargo, North Dakota, this summer, we picked up a copy of the free weekly, which was having its annual Reader’s Choice awards. Yay! thinks us. All the secret ins and outs of high Fargo living in one neat package. We checked the category “Best Ice Cream”. In Fargo, the best ice cream is listed as Dairy Queen.
“Best Pizza”? Pizza Hut.
“Best Business Lunch Spot”? I kid you not: The Ground Round.
In every single category save one, the top purveyor in town was a pieceacrap chain restaurant. (The lone exception? “Best Family Dining” was at the Space Alien Café, which we could see from our hotel window and was a lot of fun. Food was even good.) No local specialty barbecue, no high-class beef restaurant downtown that old politicians frequent, not even a local coffee shop with a good piece of pie. Just the same old crap.
So don’t tell me that changing Marshall Field’s name to Macy’s is good, or smart, or inevitable. It’s just one more coat of biege paint across the national landscape. Just the same old crap.
The War on Christmas has become a global conflict:
From Yahoo News:
Forty drunken Santas rampaged through central Auckland, stealing from stores and assaulting security guards, the New Zealand Herald reported on Sunday, in a protest against the commercialization of Christmas.
[snip]
“They came in, said ‘Merry Christmas’ and then helped themselves,” convenience store staff member Changa Manakynda told the Herald, which reported the Santas also attacked a Christmas tree.
What are the jelly-spined isolationists going to say NOW?
As sure as one bus follows another after a 40-minute bus-free interlude, depression follows our annual Monkey Day frolics. Ho-hum. No more banana daiquiris, no more poop-flinging contests, no more lice-grooming with friends and family, no more heartwarming sing-alongs of the theme from “Lancelot Link.” Just three more months of dreary winter.
Well, maybe it’s not all bad. I hear there’s some surreptitious holiday called Christmas coming up. But it’s under siege by EVERYBODY except a small group of resistance fighters who number, oh, about 245 million people. So, keep it under your hat. Fight on, o valiant fighters! You are the brave descendents of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, er, probably not.
For a jolly laugh, check out these pictures of happy, happy children cuddling up to Old Santa Claus.
It’s here it’s here it’s finally HERE!!!!!
Quit your job!
Take off your pants!
Swing from the rafters!
Dress like a cowboy and ride a dog!
Fling some poop!
IT’S NATIONAL MONKEY DAY!!!!!
Tease a fundamentalist!
Go see King Kong!
Order a Monkey Phone Call for your friends!
Masturbate like you mean it!
Buy a million typewriters and call a million of your monkey friends and type the complete works of Shakespeare!
Evolve, for God’s sake!
IT’S NATIONAL MONKEY DAY!!!!!
Image from the Taipei Times.
I neglected this blog last week for a number of reasons. For one, I bought a new VAIO to replace my rapidly degenerating Presario (the thing has started to act like HAL at the end of 2001, though it hasn’t started its singing act yet). Too many hours have been spent trying to get the new laptop to act like the old laptop, without all the old laptop problems. Still a long way from finishing the project, so in my little corner of the basement, in addition to every other mess, I’ve got two laptops covering all my available desk space.
I’ve also been in a state of excitement waiting for the new “King Kong” to open. A friend of mine from the Tribune who saw it last week said it was excellent, and doesn’t drag during its three-hour run time. Has anyone else noticed that the movie is opening across the country on National Monkey Day? It’s no coincidence, I’m sure.
Oh, and I was trying to find some sardonic angle to explore on the whole torture business. You know, whether the US does it, and if so, how, and who really believes Bush and Co. give two figgy puddings what Europe thinks about it. (IMO, Condi Rice’s trip is just an excuse to show off her new dominatrix boots.) Torture’s just such a lovely topic to discuss during the Christmas season, isn’t it? Makes you feel all warm and cozy, especially when you bite into a nice, warm gingerbread detainee.
What kind of angle might work? An Andy Rooney curmudgeonly take (“I don’t know what the whole thing about torture is. You want torture? Try opening a bottle of Advil with the child-proof lid”)?
A Garrison Keillor, wistful and reserved (“We liberal arts majors never gave much thought to torture, even as we dissected the Marquis de Sade—figuratively, of course”)?
Unfortunately, I was unable to figure out how to type the onomatopoeic sound of one more part of my hope for mankind being shorn from inside me like guts scraped from a pumpkin, so I just left the blog blank. And vowed to stick with monkeys from now on.
…then the Evangelicals have already won it. They already run the Air Force Academy, right? Do the godless secularists, liberals or Wal-Mart execs have that kind of firepower? Maybe Wal-Mart does, but the rest, I don’t think so.
The possibility of foundling baskets on their doorsteps.
Note pinned to blanket: “Dear John, I did so enjoy our time together in Borneo when you were on your mission trip. Please take good care of little Benji here. Doesn’t he have your eyes and happy expression? Don’t try to contact me, it would never work out–I’m headed for the tree canopy for good. Love always, Bongo.”
Put your lighters in the air, dudes and dudettes: The inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced yesterday. Sabbath, the Sex Pistols, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Blondie and Miles Davis (?) will soon be enshrined in that stately assemblage. Wouldn’t it be a treat if all of their plaques were lined up next to each other, so the punks and the metal heads and the Skynyrd fans could mix it up every day?
I’ve been to that museum twice, but still have a hard time swallowing the whole concept. Comprehensive historical expositions on the psychedelic era just seem like such make-work efforts, like pursuing a degree in American studies.
Maybe the problem is the glass pyramid on the Cleveland lakefront, designed by bigtime muckymuck I.M. Pei. What the hell does a glass pyramid have to do with rocknroll, except for Todd Rundgren and maybe Madonna’s boobs (weren’t they a geometric shape at one point?) ? Too egg-headed. A much more apt setting would be a barge floating next to the back end of a gigantic pink 56 Chevy, stuck nose down in the mud of Lake Erie with flames coming out of the wreckage. This would announce to the world both, “Live fast, die young” and “Yeah, our river caught fire once—wanna make something of it?”
So shout “FREEEE BIRRRRRRD!” at everyone you meet this week. Or just randomly, as you’re standing in the street.
Just west of downtown Chicago is the Blommer Chocolate Company, maker of specialty chocolate and cocoa to other manufacturers and snack bakers. When the wind is blowing right, downtown and River North used to be permeated with a calming, enjoyable, not-too-sweet smell of chocolate being rendered from cacao beans.
Who doesn’t love the smell of fresh chocolate cooking? Apparently some doofus in a converted loft nearby doesn’t, because that doofus has successfully sicced the EPA on the factory. He wasn’t complaining about the smell (probably because that was a known condition when the doofus bought his little exposed brick party pad, and therefore not actionable). His complaint to the EPA was the particulate the factory put into the air. Maybe the cocoa was dusting all the Crate & Barrel furniture this doofus had filled his place with, or clogging up the DVD player in his rad home theater system.
Well, whatever the reason, the EPA has cited the Blommer company and forced it to clean up. Now the factory will install extra filters that will eliminate both the particulate and the smell. Now, the doofus can quit worrying about getting cocoa lung, and start worrying about how he’ll have no friends when word gets out that he was the Slugworth who brought to an end that nice occasional aroma that was such a pleasant surprise.
These kinds of stories grow like weeds around Chicago’s industrial neighborhoods. Factories and plants—you know, places that actually employ people and pay taxes—are trying to stay in the city, and Joe and Stacee Timeshare move in down the block in a renovated loft space and start harassing the factory because it actually emits a smell or a noise or has trucks driving up to it at odd hours. Well, sorry, Joe and Stacee, they were there first, so shut the F up. There are few enough places in the city where people without a college education can earn a decent wage, and they don’t need you whiners making their lives difficult. Go find another place to live, or move back to Kenosha. Chicago’s already lost most of its candy-making capacity—how many of you knew it was once the candy manufacturing champ in America? So who knows how long Blommer will stick around if they have to put up with these squealing infants?
Today, George W. Bush pardoned twoThanksgiving turkeys named Marshmallow and Yam in front of a horde of reporters. By the end of his term, barring any change of heart, or maybe DNA evidence, he will have pardoned 16 turkeys.
And you figure, he’ll probably pardon at least half a dozen people in connection with TraitorGate when his term in office winds down.
Does anyone know how many people on Death Row he pardoned while he was governor of Texas? I’m serious, does anybody have that number?
Too bad those inmates weren’t cute and cuddly and associated with some holiday.
When I was a teenager, I loved nothing better than putting on my headphones and listening to “Exile on Main Street” at a body-shaking volume (it being usually late at night when I got the chance). Later on in a misspent youth, quite below the legal drinking age, I made it in to a lot of the first punk bars in Detroit. Clubs like Bookie’s and the New Miami, for those who want to get nostalgic. And when tours were announced for bands other than Journey and Kansas and the Babys and whatever other kind of bastardized rock you can name, I snapped up tickets to those, too, and did everything I could to let the music pound through my body as if I were a jellyfish. After a triumvirate of the Ramones in November 1978, the Police two months later, and the Jam two months after that, I remember feeling like someone had rammed a spike down my ear canals, giving me unsettling pain to go along with the expected ringing in my ears.
The pain eventually stopped, but the ringing never has, and has actually gotten worse over the years.
We could never figure out why I got it quicker and more severely than any of my friends, some of whom were musicians (shouldn’t being in Big Black have had some kind of corrosive effect?). But such is life. Since losing my hearing was the worst thing that ever happened to me (how’d you like to be a writer and not be able to overhear conversations in public?) , I’ve badgered all my nieces and nephews to wear ear protection at concerts. Being smarter than me, they have actually followed my advice. And for anyone reading now, considered yourself badgered. Earplugs have never been easier to find at the store.
If you want to know what it feels like to have constant ringing in your head, check out this story on NPR about composer Brent Michael Davids. A sufferer of tinnitus (the medical name for the high-pitched ringing), Davids wrote “Tinnitus Quartet” to give audiences an idea of what it’s like to have this condition. Listen to that high A in the short snippet in the newsstory, and then imagine having that in your head day and night, every day of your life.
Ironically, even though The Jam was the band that broke my ear’s camel’s back, I didn’t even like them all that much. About three years later, they were one of my favorite bands
It doesn’t make you look like a Yukon fur trader.
It makes you look like a Yukon pimp.
So Christmas is coming barreling down the road, a full 18-wheeler of fun and frolic and rich food that’s only sort of tasty. Before you put on your hockey pads and go out to the mall, you should check the list of this year’s most dangerous toys. You can find this list, published every year by the group Parents Who’ve Already Turned Their Kids Into Whiny, Fearful Pansies and Now Have the Time to Do It to Yours, and pictures of the toys at CNN. This grouping is a staple of the news at this time of year, along with announcements of January plant closings and designated driver reminders.
First off, anyone who has to point out that the “Lord of the Rings – Return of the King Uruk-Hai Crossbow” set might cause eye injuries should get a job on the local weekend TV newscasts. It’s the only place I can think of where such “No, duh” thinking can be turned into a paying job. If a kid takes an Uruk-Hai as his role model, good luck getting him or her to put on eye protection.
Secondly, if everyone is so worried about youngsters choking on small parts of all these toys, my best suggestion is to cover the toys in Tabasco sauce or Chinese mustard. If we teach the little bips to quit putting things in their mouths, maybe they’ll spread fewer cold germs.
Another solution to the small, swallowable parts problem is to only give kids very large, heavy presents, like 6X6 posts or sandbags. This would have the double benefit of strengthening their upper bodies.
Lastly, I really can’t find fault with the makers of the 38″ Air Kicks Kickaroos Anti-Gravity Boots, even apart from the cool name. The boots are sort of spring-like things that kids slip over their boots. The Toy Nazis are whining that the box only warns children to “always remain in control of your motions”. I think that’s just good advice for everybody, not just kids.
Come back, Irwin Mainway! Make playtime fun again!
“Tomlinson, you’ve been replaced as regional manager. Clear out your desk and see H.R. for your severence bananas.”
