Happy Halloweeeoooow!

It takes a nation of a-holes to keep us down

After several years in LA, the land that public transportation forgot, it's nice on many levels to be back in the city of fat pizzas and elevated lines. But for various reasons, it was almost a more pleasant experience to drive in LA. Don't throw your keys at me until you hear me out.

Exhibit A:
Chicago is the only place I have seen a cop drive down a one-way street the wrong way just because he could. No siren, no checking cross-streets, no hurry.

Exhibit B:
It's the only place where people will pull up in front of a house or apartment building before work, lean on their horns, and keep honking until their passengers drag their butts out of bed. There were times I badly wanted a paintball gun to tattoo these a-holes.

Exhibit C:
Of any place I've lived, Chicago tops the charts for double-parking. And I've lived in Mexico, where even the locals admit most of their compatriots are egregious violators in this regard. Four-way flashers are not a force field, a-holes.

Exhibit D:
Chicago has, in my experience, the highest incidence of drivers with absolutely no remorse over blocking four lanes of traffic at rush hour to make a left turn from the far right lane with the red light against them.

Exhibit E:
How many cities with such a gorgeous lakefront can boast so many people who drive to the shore and never even get out to enjoy the view from the other side of the windshield?

And this doesn't even touch on my experiences as a pedestrian and (respectful) rollerblader in this town.

Do you justice

I have a crush on Jan Crawford Greenberg.

Don't tell my wife (she's automatically notified whenever I post new stuff, so there's really no point).

JCB reports on the Supreme Court for both the Chicago Tribune and the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. I know what you're thinking: black robed elderly judges--what could be more arousing? The way JCB covers the Court, not much.

Perhaps it's the tender yet forceful way she lays bare the most intimate details of that august body. There is absolutely no "prude" in her view of jurisprudence.

Just tune in to PBS during these upcoming confirmation hearings and see if you don't agree.

Fogelson's Law

(With absolutely no apologies to Haeckel.)

Androgeny Recapitulates Gynandromorphy.

Go White Sox!

I see by your ass you have excellent taste

Who started this trend of putting logos and designer names on the back end of pants, skirts, etc.?

I blame school athletic departments. They started slapping team names on legs and rumps back when I was in high school, but you could at least justify it by reference to the "Property of" tag that usually framed that fashion statement. Sort of makes your cross-country runners into human hotel keys--"If found in a snowdrift somewhere, please mail back to..."

Redirecting the question of blame, look at yourself. How much do you have to love your clothier to wear their ad on your butt? I suppose there are more unseemly locales for such designer vainglory. Would you go out in public, for example, with Ralph Lauren hanging off your crotch...so to speak?

There's just no good reason to carry free ad space on your person unless you are paid to do so. Try making that demand the next time you're at a boutique checkout counter: "I want a cut of the ad revenue my ass is generating." They'll probably tell you something catty like "Start hitting the Stairmaster and then we'll talk."

The moral, if that term even applies:
Respect your hindquarters as a mode of communication. If you must, you can indulge in the faux shock of cheeks labeled "Porn Star" or the (possibly more accurate) "Juicy." But at least be creative enough to send your own uniquely degrading message.

(Bear in mind this comes from a kid who, in his custom-made "March Naked" t-shirt, was featured prominently - and gleefully - on a local "Best of the Senior High Class" TV spot.)

Comic Cat-ass-trophism, or: Mars, Venus, Uranus?

"Right now, animals are crapping in our houses! And we're cleaning it up!! Did we lose a war??" Homer J. Simpson

If you're a "cat person" (and I often wonder if there might be some subtle connection to being a "Mac person"), the following might rub you the wrong way. As a canine-comfortable person who is now a happy and indulgent co-parent of two black kitties - let's call them Shoggoth and Tsathoggua - I share this with nothing but affection.

I'm still weirded out by cat butts.

Not the fact that they have them, per se. (Something about them being like opinions...in that they tend to stink...or something.)

No, more the fact that I have a good chance of being confronted with them at eye level whether I'm lying down, sitting, or even standing. Cats are freaking nimble. If they're as friendly as ours, cats are liable to stroll across the back of the sofa and promenade back and forth by your head to get some attention. Add this to the way they will park themselves anywhere with one leg up and lick their holes after evacuating, and there's just no avoiding it.

Cat ass.

Perhaps, as my dear felinophile wife reminds me, I should be thankful that they're so meticulous cleaning even that end of their anatomy. And that we don't need to take them for a potty run in the middle of a snowstorm. Besides, she insists, "they're soooo cuuute!"

That's as may be.

But that doesn't mean I have to like a purring, fuzzy mini Pit of Sarlac blocking my view when I'm trying to watch "Supernanny."

Meow.

Food, Folks, and WTF?!? What I'll miss most about LA

This past summer, my wife and I returned to Chicago after a couple of fairly eventful years in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, CA. (Among the events: becoming husband and wife, thank you very much.) We were often too busy to get out and fully indulge in all delights and terrors that LA offers. Perhaps it was for the best. But the fact that my wife's family remains in the area gives us several good reasons for return visits.

As a Midwesterner, LA alternately enchanted, amused, irritated, and terrified me. I readily admit that I'm very glad to be back in Chicago, and in the Midwest generally. But I will also own up to a certain nostalgia for SoCal, for certain favorite things. You will find an annotated and hyperlinked list of them below for your amusement and/or enlightenment.


Lay of the Land

• I loved having mountains on all sides for scenery and for recreation, especially the Santa Susanas behind my mother-in-law's house.
• Living just over the hill from Hollywood, kitsch was a marked feature of the terrain: from the Brady Bunch House to the site of Spears-Federline wedding to the humming engines of "the Industry," all within blocks of our apartment.
• I also enjoyed interacting with the wildlife, especially stalking western fence lizards.
• After enduring a couple of blasts of desert summer heat, I came to relish "June gloom," when the damp marine clouds crept over the Santa Monica mountains.
• Even now, I am still floored by the incongruous and superabundant flora--pine trees surrounded by bougainvillea on the same block as decorative citrus trees. (How can you let those damn oranges rot on your lawns, people?)

Remembrance of Repasts
Though I'm not a real foodie like my wife and her family, I really enjoyed having every kind of exotic cuisine (made by people from there--and their Mexican cooks) a short drive away. Just a few highlights:

• "Sushi Gulch": our strip of Ventura Blvd and a favorite star hangout, where every other building serves Japanese food. Our favorites were Tama, Cio-Cio San, and Daichan.
• Zankou Chicken in any of its locations. You could go to Carousel in Glendale for high-class Middle Eastern cuisine, but you won't get Armenian chicken (and bright yellow shirts!) to go.
• Wat Thai LA's weekend Thai food bazaar (two words: knom krok).
• Asian markets (Galleria for Korean and Mitsuwa for Japanese food), where white people like me can almost be certain of what we're getting--but it's usually tasty.
• How could I forget? In-n-Out!
  

Espectáculos (or Guilty Pleasures)

• It particularly tickled me to run into familiar faces in the course of my everyday existence--spotting Clancy in his classic convertible, standing behind Walter at the bank, bumping into Steve in a museum, and watching MJ's dad go through the x-ray at LAX.
• Living treasure Huell Howser: did that Simpsons roast make sense to anyone outside of CA?
• Hal Fishman, legend, anchorman. Tell me he is not the model for Kent Brockman.
• Apocalyptic local news: Fire! Flood! Quake! Car chase! Immigrants!
• 6 Spanish and 2 Asian channels over the free airwaves. When I was unemployed and cat-sitting, I got my RDA of Korean soaps, Mexican courtroom shows, and Japanese cooking competitions.
• The SoCal hothouse for all flavors of eccentricity--the Church of Scientology, the Integratron, the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

We'll still have similar kinds of good things in Illinois. We can, thanks to our automotive accoutrement, persist in the Trader Joes/IKEA lifestyle (with all apologies to Sandra Tsing Loh). For that matter, there are still ethnic goodies to be had. Just not in the same abundance, or with the same atmosphere.

Postscript:
My first day in LA, my now-wife, then-girlfriend and I went to get groceries in the Studio City Trader Joe's. We found ourselves surrounded by obvious entertainment types (and probably wannabes; I still can't tell 'em apart). Noticing my Minnesota license plate t-shirt, the clerk chortled "Welcome to LA...now get out!" We all laughed.

Well, you got it, dude. Never meant to stay.

What? No 7/4? On the lameness of pop-rock functionalism

Nota bene: this rant comes from someone who discovered rock (in its "classic" and "hard" varieties) out of an early and on-going love for classical orchestral music. So I could be a little perverse.

Let me first say I am a big fan of certain subgenres of rock. As a recreational bass player, I relish playing along with old chestnuts by Cream, Zeppelin, Hendrix, and a host of their contemporaries. I see no contradiction or schizoid separation in being moved by Hendrix's "Red House" (live or studio version) and Hindemith's "Mathis der Maler"--for many of the same aesthetic reasons.

That said, I'm really turned off by the narrow genre conventions of pop and rock generally. In the main they have to do with milking proven ways to sell records, tickets, and memorabilia. This is why I'm all the more impressed when really creative artists (e.g. Beck) get popular. That my respect for certain kinds of creativity is unequaled by the adoration I have for the admitted crudity and loudness of, say, "Mississippi Queen" does not diminish the former, merely my enthusiasm for it. And, if you make a living off your art within a marketplace, I have no basic problem with you tailoring your output to market forces in a way that you can bear.

But why can't there be more little tweaks and tricks to keep pop songs interesting as artistry? Case in point: odd time signatures. What "average" consumer (if there is such a thing) would even notice a lopped-off 7/4 section in the verse, for instance? It adds something interesting and out of the ordinary to what are otherwise saleable songs--perhaps making them more so. And, if you're any kind of musician, it should only slightly tax your brain. (I might be getting my hopes up: you'll find a lot more performers than musicians in pop.)

While it's kind of a stretch, take a listen to Pantera's "Broken" for clues how you might go about integrating oddness and convention successfully. The track still thrashes - even swings - through a 6/4 chorus and a 7/8 verse. It's the main reason why I really dig Pantera, Tool, Clutch, and a handful of other heavier bands (despite qualms about their lyrical content or their fan base) as creatively engaged artists and faithful rockers.

The major factor restricting creativity of form to certain niches is not market or audience expectations. It's genre conventions (and, if I may be so bold, shaky musicianship), combined with the idea that "creativity" ought to be focused on lyrics--although they also remain highly conventional. Bottom line for many pop-rock acts and industry brass: odd time signatures just don't sound right. Why? My guess is that they make the music harder - though not impossible - to dance to. Again, I'd argue that this is not technically true, simply the logic governing these genres.

This suggests a crude classification for music. Within an X/Y grid, with the X-axis labeled "expressivity" and the Y-axis labeled "functionality," we can map any song or artist. All music has each aspect, though the balance differs by genre and work. That is, classification rests on the ratio between aesthetic appreciation and visceral/bodily movement--nod your head versus shake your ass.

Four examples

• romantic classical = high expressive, low functional
• techno dance = moderate expressive, high functional
• West African drumming = low expressive, high functional
• pop = moderate expressive, moderate/high functional

I'm not yet sure where to go with this idea. Maybe I can parlay it into a future in music industry niche marketing? Make money off an idea? That might be a little too functional!

Encomium for the Jackalope

If you ever pass within 100 miles of Wall Drug, SD, you can't miss references to the venerable jackalope--part rabbit, part antelope, all-American.

Well, I'm not writing on that. So bite me.

No, I direct your attention to the Cenotaph of the Jackalope and, more particularly, its estimable proprietor, Dr. Hermester Barrington. I became acquainted with the good doctor through a mutual friend and confidant, and my life has been distinctly enriched because of it.

"Reclusive polymath" is perhaps the best way to summarize the man. He is a trustee and faculty member of that most eminent redoubt of New England higher education, Miskatonic University, where his specialty is protozoa. (Ah, would that I might be appointed lecturer in exosociology or xenoethnography there...)

Dr. Barrington is also an energetic reviewer of works in wildly diverse genres; you will find abundant evidence of his sagacity and acumen if you search him out on Amazon.com. And, as befitting a bibliophile, he oversees the Malibu Lake branch of the Invisible Library, built largely out of his personal collection of great yet oddly untraceable works of fiction and scholarship.

Seek him out on-line, for I can think of no better guide to the exquisite pleasures of obscure scholarship. Trivia, indeed, Dr. Barrington! Realia, I say.

Craunch a marmoset? Anyone?

One of the most hallucinatory reading experiences I have ever had was a brief entry in the snottily titled "Complete Book of Failure" treating arguably the least successful dictionary on record.

Republished as "English As She Is Spoke", this was the bastard result of passing English conversational phrases through French and ultimately rendering them in a doggedly literal Portuguese. The entry - reproduced in several places without permission - brings me to the point of cackling convulsions each time I lay eyes on it. It is such a concentrated blast of hilarity that I can't even bear to contemplate reading the entire work.

It's $9 new on Amazon, if you dare.