Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk Myself to Death

Make It a Good Martin Luther King Day

2012-01-16T07:48:00.000-06:00

He left us lofty ideals to live up to. The least we can do is give it a try.

Happy New Year (I Think)!

2012-01-01T07:16:00.000-06:00

Stay safe in the new year!

Blogger has apparently eaten a number of my posts. One of those was the first time I used this graphic several years ago. Anyone who remembers this from then has my sincerest apologies. But now that it's disappeared, how can I possibly pass it up?

Merry Christmas to All!

2011-12-25T12:34:00.002-06:00

And Season's Greetings and Happy Holidays, to boot!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T10:03:00.000-06:00

Save the turkeys! (Although this turkey sure looks awfully smug, doesn't he?) Don't eat too much. And take a minute or two to look around and see what you've got to be thankful for. (But don't forget--being thankful doesn't have to mean being satisfied. There's still room to fight to make things better.)

We're Grateful for Your Service

2011-11-11T07:07:00.001-06:00

Back to World War I imagery (from the great George Evans), which is the war that first brought us the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month (and this time, of course, of the 11th year). The U.S. is now preparing to drop its number of hot wars to just one. Let's keep our fingers crossed on that. But in the meantime, here's a note of thanks to all of those who have served (and are currently serving) in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as those who answered the call of duty in historical wars.

Sidestep the Monsters for Halloween!

2011-10-31T07:46:00.000-05:00

Spider-Man's hardly the first person to discover that you don't want to run into a werewolf atop the Golden Gate Bridge. Stay safe tonight, everybody.

Rest Up on Labor Day

2011-09-05T09:20:00.001-05:00

Most superheroes fight crime and do good as an avocation, but Luke Cage needed to make a living, so he started hiring himself out from an office in Times Square (and this was the sleazy '70s Times Square, not the wholesome, sanitized one of today). I'm half surprised that he never tried to organize other superheroes into a union, but that was probably left for another person at another time. At any rate, I hope Luke Cage is taking today off.

Have a Great Fourth of July!

2011-07-04T08:22:00.002-05:00

One of the cornerstones of America is the freedom of choice. Today you can choose which national symbol you want to see come out on top.

Do you prefer this . . .

. . . or this?

(I feel like an optometrist.)

Speaking of Captain America, why can't we see his movie today? It seems a pretty obvious connection to make for Independence Day. I know, it would have to go up against the new Transformers, but surely that's nothing that the Sentinel of Liberty couldn't overcome. After all, he's not star-spangled for nothing. But Marvel Studios, in its infinite wisdom, is asking us to put our patriotic urges on hold for nearly three weeks. Oh, well. I guess that allows us to focus on what's really important today: backyard cookouts.

Happy Canada Day!

2011-07-01T08:54:00.002-05:00

We're celebrating Canada today with Northguard and his mission to guard the, uh, north (including Quebec, as the fleurs-de-lis remind us). But no complaining; it's a Dan Day cover.

Enjoy Memorial Day

2011-05-30T08:41:00.003-05:00

Are you wearing white? You couldn't yesterday, but you can today. Of course, the set up for our traditional first day of summer is to remember and honor all those who have given their lives in service to the nation. So let's remember and honor them, okay?

Happy Easter Monday!

2011-04-25T18:03:00.001-05:00

It's later in the day than I'd intended, but it's still Easter Monday, which is when some countries traditionally search for their Easter eggs. Unless they're extremely tardy, though, they're probably not still decorating them. Oh, well.

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T08:06:00.000-05:00

Due to technical difficulties, we're not able to get an Easter comic book cover up this year. But keep an eye out for the Easter Monday cover, which should be on display soon.

Have a great Easter, a meaningful Passover, or an all-around fun day, whichever applies.

Play Ball!

2011-03-31T13:12:00.002-05:00

We've made it to another spring and another opening day. Keep your eye on the ball, whether you're on the field, in the stands, or in front of your computer. And, as always, Go Red Sox!

Happy Fake Irish Day!

2011-03-17T07:32:00.000-05:00

I heard it on good authority this weekend that if you've got Irish in your blood you don't need green on your garments, but what the heck--if it's good enough for Moon Mullins, I guess it's good enough for me. Don't eat the yellow snow, but it's OK to drink the green beer.

Should President's Day Be a Solemn Holiday?

2011-02-21T07:40:00.002-06:00

I don't have an answer. I'll be at work today. If you've got the day off, keep an eye out for the statues, OK?

Happy Valentine's Day!

2011-02-14T07:34:00.000-06:00

It's that day again. Tread lightly.

Remembering Dr. King

2011-01-17T21:54:00.002-06:00

I'm running late on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but here's a nice little comics bio from almost forty years ago. And if you click on over to the Golden Legacy site, through their generosity you can read the full story.

Happy New Year!!

2011-01-01T02:07:00.002-06:00

2011!! I'm not the first to suggest that it couldn't come quickly enough. Could Dan Dare even imagine how desperate we'd be to get out of 2010 when he was dreamed up as the future of our past? And by the way, where's that intergalactic travel we were promised? Heck, I'd be happy just to orbit the earth.

Have Yourself A Merry Big Christmas

2010-12-25T07:47:00.001-06:00

[UPDATED BELOW]

Much as we might sometimes wish otherwise, these guys never do anything small, so best wishes to everybody for a merry Marvel Christmas!

UPDATE--OMG!! Initially, I put up the same Christmas cover that I used last year, but clearly I meant the one that's on display above. I know that I've been phoning this blog in lately, but it never occurred to me that I should be using a videophone.

What Are You Thankful For?

2010-11-25T07:18:00.001-06:00

I've got various things that make me thankful, but today I'm thankful that Tom DeLay is being called to account. Have a great Thanksgiving!

Thanks to Those Who Served (and Serve)

2010-11-11T07:54:00.001-06:00

The eleventh day of the eleventh month (if not quite the eleventh hour yet) is upon us again, but this date shouldn't be the only time we honor those who put their lives on the line to serve their country (and, by extension, all of us). And even though this is an image inspired by World War II, we must not forget the men and women right now who are doing their duty halfway across the world (even if the media and politicians seem just as happy to divert our attention away).

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-31T07:46:00.000-05:00

Of course, Lois will have to deny any of this ever happened when she runs for the Senate.

A Little Light Reading for Labor Day

2010-09-06T08:07:00.002-05:00

We're not working today in celebration of those who came before us and helped set the parameters of how we work today. We didn't have to work for the last two days because of them, too. And most of is didn't hold down jobs when we were in 5th or 6th grade for the same reason. Since we've got the day off, there's plenty of time to catch up on your labor history.

This comic came out in 1948, and you can tell from its cover that is full of drama and thrills. Here's a quick excerpt from the intro page:

Join the millions of Americans who have always wanted to know the real, true story of Labor and Labor Unions in this country. Why did Captain John Smith's colony fail? Who were the Sons of Liberty? When did the first labor union start? What part did Labor play in the fight for free education? What was the Know-Nothing Party? What was the difference between the First and the Second Ku Klux Klan? Who was Samuel Gompers? What did the Knights of Labor want?

Those are a lot of questions. See what answers you can find below (courtesy of The Internet Archive).

Have a Great Fourth of July!

2010-07-04T09:48:00.000-05:00

Happy Canada Day!

2010-07-01T07:21:00.002-05:00

[UPDATED]
In honor of Wonder Woman's new look, which just became official yesterday, I thought it would be a good idea to celebrate Canada Day with a cover pic of Captain Canuck when he wore black pants and a jacket, too. So sit back with some smoked meat, a bit of poutine, and a Molson Canadian (not necessarily the best Canadian beer, but certainly the most patriotic), and enjoy.

UPDATE--Somehow, with no intention of slighting Canada in the least, I linked to a smaller image of Captain Canuck than I intended, and I only caught that error today. It's been corrected, and the good captain is now the same size as every other comics cover I've posted.

Best Chris Matthews Quote Ever!

2010-06-04T23:10:00.002-05:00

"I'm looking at myself on the camera and saying, 'I don't understand what I'm talking about here.'"

Chris Matthews said this on Tuesday, so I'm running a little bit behind, but it's more than worth playing catch-up on. For the record, the topic at hand was Al and Tipper Gore's divorce, but I think this could pretty much apply to anything Chris says at any time.

Happy Memorial Day!

2010-05-31T07:29:00.002-05:00

While we're getting the grills out to officially welcome summer (and begin wearing white, if we're so inclined), it's always worth stopping a moment to remember those who aren't with us because they've given everything in service to their country.

Play Ball!

2010-04-05T07:40:00.000-05:00

It's finally baseball season again! Go Red Sox!

Happy Easter!

2010-04-04T08:13:00.000-05:00

Here's hoping the Easter Bunny left you all kinds of surprises in your video games and DVDs.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2010-03-17T08:59:00.002-05:00

I can't tell you why, but, as far as I've been able to find, anyway, the pickings are extremely slim for St. Patrick's Day comic book covers. But here's something, the best of three cover appearances by Cuchulain, the Irish Wolfhound.

I haven't been down there since the weekend, so I can't say what the Chicago River actually looks like today, but here's a shot of it from Saturday's premature St. Patrick's Day celebration.

Enjoy Presidents Day

2010-02-15T09:16:00.002-06:00

Wow, new posts two days in a row! That hasn't happened in months. If you've got Presidents Day off, consider joining the Hulk at Mount Rushmore. If, like me, you're working today, spend a little time reflecting on the collection of Andrew Jackson portraits you're amassing.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2010-02-14T12:30:00.004-06:00

May your true love overcome all obstacles today.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

2010-01-18T23:17:00.000-06:00

Yes, this is somewhat late for an MLK post, but not every company recognizes today as a holiday. Oh, well. That hasn't stopped me from supporting everything that Dr. King stood for.

This holiday's comic was likely published in 1957, not too long after the events it depicts, and it probably was quite significant in spreading these facts and extending Dr. King's influence. I'm being vague because these were distributed throughout the South during a time when their possession could be dangerous and get one in big trouble with the wrong people. Therefore, they were often destroyed after they were read, and it's not at all clear just what their specific effects were. Fortunately, nowadays, we can read the whole thing at this site. Take a look. It's a fascinating reminder of how things were in this country a mere fifty years ago.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T01:58:00.000-06:00

It's 2010. This year we should expect Dave to return to Earth and destroy some nuclear weapons. And maybe some other stuff.

A Glorious Cacophony of XTC for Boxing Day

2009-12-26T15:14:00.000-06:00

Here's something that I found a while back but never had a chance to properly pass on. But now that we've hit what might be the ultimate chill-out holiday (in those places where it is a holiday--where it's not, people generally chill out anyway), the timing seems right. I know that there are many XTC fans out there (and if you're not one yet--what's the hold-up?), so here's a chance to play with a handful of their building blocks.

On the official XTC homepage, like on most homepages, there are a variety of links to take you to the specific subject area you desire. But where XTC has a leg up on every other homepage on the Web, each of the ten links features the guitar opening of an XTC song. Still not surprising, I know, but this is where it gets good. Track your mouse over the various guitar-pick links, and you can hear them all together. One sound cue doesn't end when the next begins, which means you can potentially get all ten going at once, if you so desire. And these aren't all the obvious songs you might expect. Sure, "Senses Working Overtime" is there, and "Wake Up" was a single, but we've also got "Neon Shuffle," "Poor Skeleton Steps Out," "Playground," and "Meccanic Dancing (Oh We Go)." Although not every album is represented (because there are only ten, after all), the entire career appears here, from White Music all the way to Wasp Star.

After you've spent some time with it and gotten used to which guitar picks produce which guitar licks, start making your own mixes. For starters, you might find "Neon Shuffle" works well with a bit of "Funk Pop a Roll" slipped in, and "Scissor Man" spices up "My Bird Performs" nicely. If you get bored, you can roll your mouse over and over the "Meccanic Dancing" pick until the machine rhythm overloads (although I refuse any responsibility if the speakers start smoking). But give it time, and you'll find what works well to your own ear. Happy Boxing Day!

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T08:12:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T08:40:00.002-06:00

The holidays are just coming fast and furious, now, aren't they? I hope you're farther along with your turkey than these guys are. Have a great day!

Thanks for Your Service

2009-11-11T07:40:00.001-06:00

Here we are again at Veterans' Day. With two live wars, the numbers of vets in our society grows every day. I can't always get behind the policy used to prosecute these wars, but I've got to acknowledge and respect those putting their lives on the line for their nation.

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T08:01:00.001-05:00

Posting is getting very few and far between (more than a month and a half--what's that about?), but come on, I couldn't sidestep Halloween. Will more regular posting ever resume on this blog? It could happen.

Relax for Labor Day!

2009-09-07T10:50:00.003-05:00

This is the paradoxical holiday in which we take a break from work so we can celebrate work. Fire up the charcoal!

Who Doesn't Like a Day Off?

2009-08-16T23:00:00.000-05:00

It's "Not Quite Labor Day, but Close Enough" in Chicago on Monday. Most civic employees get a nice late summer's day off. Unfortunately, they're also taking a "wage vacation," too. The city's calling it Reduced-Service Day, but it essentially means, except for emergency services, the city's closing down to save a few bucks. It's doing the same thing on the Friday after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve (that's always a popular move--cut employees' paychecks just in time for Christmas), and its supposed to save us all $8.3 million.

When you look around the country at other states and municipalities and their problems, moves like this are only the tip of the iceberg. Although a repeat of the Great Depression doesn't look as likely as it might've a few months ago, we've still got a long way to go to pull out of our financial mess. Telling people to stay home three days a year isn't going to provide the edge we need to balance a budget. The city and the county have already been raising taxes. They can keep on doing that, but not without consequences. Cut services? That'll happen one way or another if they can't afford them.

But whatever we do, we'd better not set aside the Olympic bid.

Hey, Look! It's a New Blog Post!

2009-08-14T21:09:00.001-05:00

I never intended to abandon this blog, although not posting anything new in almost a month certainly might cause one to wonder. Although I was hoping desperately that ending my commitment to post something new here every day would leave me with more time to do other things, it seems very much like my other responsibilities have simply absorbed most of the new spare time, instead. As some of you have already figured out, though, I have recently started being diverted by Twitter (follow me here) and Facebook (friend me here), though they provide a different, more interactive but less in-depth experience.

In years past, I've talked about bands and shows I've gone to, but that's recently taken a back seat to my busy schedule of too many tasks. I live-blogged the last show I saw, Art Brut, almost three years ago (read it here, here, and here), and I haven't made it out for live music ever since. Tonight I'm breaking that interregnum, though, with another show. Although my musical interests remain reasonably broad, it's again Art Brut that beckons. They're at the Subterranean tonight, and it will be my first time at that venue. Will I live blog it? It could happen, if I find myself with anything to say at length. But technology marches on, and I'd say it's much more likely that you'll find me on Twitter. As I've already tweeted, "I read my DC comics. I drank my chocolate milkshake. Now I'm ready to go see @EddieArgos and Art Brut with my little brother."

Sublime in the Subway

2009-07-18T00:26:00.000-05:00

I had some business downtown this morning, so I was off far earlier than I usually leave to drive to work. Parking downtown is far more difficult and expensive than it is at my suburban workplace (where our office park has a free dedicated parking lot), so Mrs. Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk (who works in the Loop) and I went down on the El.

As it turned out, my business downtown didn't take long to wrap up, so I was headed home (without Mrs. Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk, who stayed down to work or do something equally silly) about 10:30. I must've just missed a northbound train at the Lake Street Red Line station, as it took several minutes for the next one to come. But while I was waiting, something very unusual was taking place.

I'd been standing on a fairly crowded platform for a couple of minutes when all of a sudden someone started singing "Over the Rainbow." I didn't immediately see the singer, and although one can often find busking musicians in the El, the fact that it sounded to be a capella made me initially think someone was just goofing. But the singing continued, and it didn't take me too long to spot an older man standing a ways down on the other side of the platform. From "over the Rainbow," he segued into "Mona Lisa." He had a strong but very sweet voice, which was very effectively displayed by the melodic pop he was choosing to place in his repertoire.

It was also during "Mona Lisa" that I started to notice just how quiet it had become in the subway station. There's always some noise with all the people coming and going, so it wasn't absolutely silent, but all ongoing conversation had ended, no one was talking on a cell phone, and there wasn't much more jostling and moving around than was necessary. Yet, although everyone was clearly listening, very few people were overtly acknowledging the singer. Even if people went over to put some money in his collection, they didn't do much more than walk over, drop the money in, and step away. It was so quiet, though, that when one person dropped in a couple of coins, even at 25 or 30 feet, I could hear the coins land (how else could I have known that they were coins rather than bills?). And even the heavy metal kid in the AC/DC T-shirt went over to slip him something.

The northbound train was taking its time in getting there, so I heard a few more songs, as well. He sang "Chain Gang," which immediately brought to mind the similarity of his voice to Sam Cooke's. They each had the paradox of gravity and seriousness leavened with a certain weightlessness. "Moon River" followed, and he was singing "What a Wonderful World" as the subway finally arrived. You never know the details of another person's situation, but this man certainly seemed to have far too beautiful a voice to simply sing in the subway for tips. I've since been told that he's been seen down there at various stations from time to time, so what I experienced is not that unusual. I'm sure he has his own circumstances and reasons for doing this, but whatever his story, he certainly brightened my morning.

Have a Great Fourth of July!

2009-07-04T08:28:00.001-05:00

Despite the implication of this 40-year-old cover, Captain America is indeed coming back. Keep that in mind as you eat hot dogs and apple pie and watch fireworks. There's nothing to worry about.

Captain Canuck Is Back

2009-07-01T23:52:00.002-05:00

What a great way to end Canada Day! A collection of Captain Canuck comics from the '70s by Richard Comely and George Freeman has just been released by IDW. Although it's ostensibly available in stores now, IDW doesn't seem to have done the best job of putting it out there, as Amazon just says it was published on Monday, and even IDW lists it as going in to their own catalog on June 16. My comics store didn't know anything about it. But if it's not out there yet, it soon will be! I don't have all the issues this collection brings together, but I've got a few of them, and these are fun comics! This book is certainly something to look forward to.

Happy Canada Day!

2009-07-01T07:41:00.000-05:00

And here's one for the tourists:

You Know Who You Are

2009-06-23T12:21:00.001-05:00

Here's a little something for those of us who've been missing the Binny's troubadour.

One More Time for the Theatre Building

2009-06-21T13:00:00.000-05:00

Last week, I passed along the information about an auction in support of Chicago's Theatre Building. It was scheduled to end a week ago, but quite frankly, they're not getting the interest that a lot of these items deserve. So the auction was extended a week--which means, it's in its final hours all over again! (The time is down to 8 hours as I post this.)

There are almost 100 items that still have no bids at all! This includes entertainment items, sports memorabilia, and books, DVDs, and CDs! Go look around and find something you'd like. And if you've already gone, go back and look again. (Mrs. Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk has her bids in for us.)

Take a look here for more information about the Theatre Building and its activities. It's much more than simply a performance venue. For just a taste, here's its Mission Statement:

1. To provide subsidized space, equipment and support for performing groups
We offer services to the performing arts community with an emphasis on emerging artists and companies.

2. To develop and produce new musicals
We nurture new musicals – from our professional writers’ workshop to our concert readings and studio presentations to our nationally recognized festival of new musicals.

3. To provide opportunities for emerging artists, administrators and performing groups
We offer an intensive internship program, affording students the opportunity to break into the field.

Who can argue with that? Go bid and support the Theatre Building!

Are You Watching TV?

2009-06-13T00:58:00.000-05:00

The big switch from analog to digital TV happened today, and you were either ready for it or you weren't. A Nielsen poll suggested that 76,000 households in Chicago were unprepared to lose their analog signal. I've mentioned before that we hadn't sprung for cable here at Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk Central, but our hand was finally called, so, after waiting almost until we couldn't wait any longer, we had to put up or shut up. The cable guy came out on Tuesday, so we're now concluding our third full day of cable. I guess that means that we were among those 76,000 households unprepared when they survey was taken last week. That means there are now only 75,999 households out of luck.

Some of those people tried to take care of what they needed to this morning when the Dish Network sponsored a "swap" of government coupons for converter boxes. Too many people showed up, however (it was an estimated crowd of 500), so some went home empty handed. We'll see whether most of these TV-less people work out a way to receive the new digital signal or if we hear more about their plight. The media is probably not concerned about making those voices heard, but we may become aware of them through blogs or other unconventional methods.

If you're one of those people, though, WWME (23), which has received some local acclaim as ME-TV, has a signal that's at a low enough power that it doesn't have to give up its analog signal. The station has started to broadcast the WCIU (channel 26) signal, with breaks for news from WMAQ (5) and WGN (9). I just checked it out on our sole uncabled TV, and I not only found a signal there, but there was one at channel 48, ME-Too, as well, broadcasting the normal Me Too schedule. Is that an oversight that will be gone in the morning, or will ME-Too continue for the foreseeable future, as well? For the time being, at least, that gives analog TV viewers two choices.

Support Chicago's Theatre Building

2009-06-12T02:31:00.000-05:00

Things are tough all over--we all know that. Everybody's finding it just that much harder (or considerably harder, as the case may be) to make ends meet, and everybody could use a little bit of help. But one place where it's particularly bad is in the arts. Many arts groups depend on government grants and other funding, and a lot of that comes from the states. The federal government's been looking for spending in relation to the stimulus package, but state governments have been doing little more than cutting back. Here in Illinois, for instance, the Illinois Arts Council is slashing parts of its budget. The Theatre Building in Chicago is set to lose 75 percent of the funding the Arts Council provided last year. They're on the case, though, to make up parts of that amount. Since the beginning of the month, they've been conducting an online auction that includes a broad variety of items (134 of them, to be exact). There are tickets to shows on the auction block, books, CDs, sports tickets and memorabilia (the Cubs, the White Sox, the Bears, the Bulls, and the Blackhawks are all represented--even the Green Bay Packers), furniture, travel packages--all kinds of stuff. The bidding finishes on Sunday evening, so you've still got room to browse, and the majority of items don't even have initial bids. There's plenty of good stuff yet to be had. And it's for a worthy cause. Go take a look!

Close to Home

2009-06-06T01:38:00.001-05:00

Atrios has been keeping a running tab on which banks are being gobbled up by the FDIC, and that's where I first saw the news that the Bank of Lincolnwood was being taken over. I don't have any money at the Bank of Lincolnwood, but I pass it every day on my way to work. (I'm linking to the locations webpage because the home page has info about the FDIC takeover). The main office of my employer is just down the block (although I work at a separate office a few miles further away). The Bank of Lincolnwood sign is where I can find out how hot or cold it is. I always thought it was funny that the bank had a second branch that was on the same street less than a quarter mile away--they have a time and temperature sign, too.

The bank has been sold to Republic Bank of Chicago (which is actually headquartered in Oak Brook), and it's expected to open under Republic's auspices on Saturday morning. It's too early to say for sure, but the majority of employees are expected to be kept on. According to the FDIC, the Bank of Lincolnwood is Illinois's sixth bank failure this year (other news reports identify it as this year's third Chicago failure) and the 37th in the nation. I've seen some of those others, and I don't mean to say that I didn't take them seriously, but it's interesting to note how the simple proximity of this one make the entire recession and economic difficulties we're in have more resonance for me. Or maybe not--perhaps that's what proximity is all about.

New Trends in Book Shows?

2009-06-05T02:09:00.001-05:00

Since I didn't actually attend this year, I haven't had much to say about BEA. Reports I've heard back from those who were there described a subdued show, which matches with much of what I've read online. One attendee talked about the specter of kindle that he could feel pervading the show, keeping everyone looking over their shoulder. Certainly it's hard to avoid questioning the future of the show (even if we try our best to avoid the equally obvious uncertain future of book publishing in general).

Peggy Burns, associate publisher of Drawn & Quarterly comics, didn't go to the show, either. Earlier this week at the D&Q blog, she explained why. It's true that BEA is extremely expensive if you're setting up a display, and if you're a small press, at some point you have to start thinking about diminishing returns. But Peggy also discusses the possibility of book shows for consumers, which may be more effective for smaller publishing concerns.

All of which brings us to the annual Printers Row Lit Fest, which puts on a consumer book show in downtown Chicago this weekend. There are two full days of events and talks on Saturday and Sunday, as well as plenty of booths for publishers and booksellers alike. Drawn & Quarterly will be there, along with some comics programming: Lynda Barry and Chris Ware share a stage to talk; Ivan Brunetti, book designer Chip Kidd, and author David Hadju (The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America) discuss the form; and Harvey Pekar talks about two different books on Saturday and Sunday, his adaptation of Studs Terkel's Working and his graphic history of the Beats. Neil Gaiman, who still has a finger or two in comics, will also be there, but not surprisingly, tickets are no longer available for his presentation (although no-show tickets will be released 15 minutes beforehand--it's all free, so it's very possible that some people who reserved won't show up). I haven't figured out exactly what my plans for the weekend will be yet, but it seems hard to go wrong in attending. The future of book trade shows? It could be along these lines.

Speaking of Printer's Row Lit Fest, it appears that Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk pal Stu Shea has sold out. It's been said that every person has a price, and if that's the case, it appears Stu hasn't been offered his yet--his integrity is intact. No, he's part of a "Cubbie Blues" panel with Sara Paretsky and James Finn Garner, among others, which also has also run through its free tickets. As with Neil Gaiman, a few tickets may become available just before the panel begins. For those of us who still can't get in, then I guess we'd better keep our eyes open for YouTube video.

What Exactly Are We Expecting of Our Judges, Again?

2009-06-02T02:28:00.002-05:00

Is it the Internet Age, or is it just me? I feel like we've been talking about Sonia Sotomayor for ages, but it's still just a week since Obama officially nominated her for the Supreme Court. There had been talk about her before the nomination came in, and that might be part of it. It could also be the single-minded argument of the Republican party branding her a racist (a courageous and valiant stand for them to make, because privileged white males have been downtrodden for far too long).

Aside from the silliness about Sotomayor being a racist, one of the primary complaints that conservatives are airing is that she would use her background as a Latina woman to trump the law. The good folks at SCOTUSblog have shown that there's nothing much to this, but it raises the point of how far, exactly, the right wants judges to go in ignoring their backgrounds. Partially, of course, it depends on whether conservatives think a judge's background works in their favor or not, because, as Jason Linkins pointed out at The Huffington Post, the backgrounds of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito were among their key selling points for their Supreme Court nominations.

But even aside from the requisite right-wing inconsistency, the question is ridiculous. Part of what a judge is supposed to be offering is wisdom, and wisdom only develops out of experience. If we just want a straight reading of the letter of the law, then we don't need a judge at all. We should just get a computer. It wouldn't be hard to simply shift over to digital law, with a 1 for legal and a 0 for illegal. Or, since the Star Trek movie is still doing well, let's just have Obama nominate Mr. Spock (which wouldn't work, of course, because we're still more than 200 years away from Spock's birth). But that's not what we want. We want a judge who will weigh a case by looking at the law as written and perhaps considering its real-life ramifications. No living, breathing human being can help but filter that through her personal experiences and background. I'll admit that how judges allow this to influence their decision-making process can be a fair enough question, but in examining Sotomayor's appeals court record, SCOTUSblog has come up with nothing to suggest that she's beyond the norm, that she's doing anything beyond issuing unremarkable and reasonable decisions.

Memorial Day

2009-05-25T16:27:00.002-05:00

Here we are again, honoring and remembering those who have sacrificed in our name, and those who continue to put themselves in harm's way. We've got a new commander-in-chief this year, and a new strategy for the two wars he inherited. The current iCasualties count in Iraq, in which U.S. involvement is ostensibly winding down (whether military interests will drag their heals to avoid Obama's deadline remains to be seen), is 4,300 U.S. military dead, and 4,618 coalition fatalities. Afghanistan, which is picking up the slack for the drawdown in Iraq, currently stands at 687 American fatalities out of a total of 1,154 coalition deaths.

Let's keep this in mind when we're flipping burgers and grilling brats.

Mancow Advances the Torture Discussion

2009-05-23T03:05:00.001-05:00

No, really, he does. And in a positive way. Hard to believe, I know.

OK, he didn't plan it to go the way that it did. The whole thing started as a publicity stunt in which Mancow would undergo waterboarding on the air during his radio show so that he could prove that it's no big deal for a real man. He expected to "laugh it off." But then he actually went through with it.

Without training, regular people can stand only a few seconds of the process. A marine on hand at the studio said that 14 seconds is the norm. Mancow withstood about six seconds before pulling away. In friendly, casual, two-consenting adults waterboarding, of course, pulling away is allowed, but prisoners aren't generally afforded that luxury. Speaking afterward, Mancow was clearly shaken. He said that he although he didn't want to admit it, he now accepts that waterboarding is torture. (There's video of the experience at the site of WMAQ, Chicago's NBC affiliate.)

Steve Benen made the obvious point. Addressing those who refuse to acknowledge waterboarding as torture, he said:

This is not only absurd, it defies common sense: if this wasn't torture, we wouldn't have done it. The whole point is to do something so horrific that the detainee would feel compelled to give up information. If it were merely a "splash in the face," as some on the right have argued, why would Bush administration officials think it might be effective?

Mancow is not likely to change any minds, though. Christopher Hitchins conducted a similar experiment almost a year ago, and as I mentioned at the time, those who claim to believe that waterboarding is not torture do so for ideological reasons, certainly not for any reason based on its merit. Already, the gang over at Hot Air (I'm not linking--go find it yourself, if you must) have started their ridicule of Mancow's virility. What a way to debate a nation's morality.

Pringles Really Are Potato Chips After All!

2009-05-21T00:45:00.000-05:00

The U.K.'s Valued-Added Tax doesn't usually apply to food, but potato-based snacks are a different matter. As a snack food, they're presumably regarded as something less than a necessity. The good folks at Pringles, though, probably fearing that they were losing sales from customers who didn't want the extra VAT expense, thought that they might have a way around it. It seems reasonable enough--Pringles are much more bland than other potato chips, and they look and taste like they've been processed within an inch of their lives. Lives that they never had, by the way, because it seems like there's nothing natural about them in any manner.

Unfortunately, Procter & Gamble couldn't convince the British courts of that. Last year, a judge had bought the argument that, since Pringles are only 42 percent potato, have uniform taste and shape (a shape that "is not found in nature," by the way), and are packaged in tubes rather than in bags, they're actually more like cakes or cookies than like chips. Yeah, I don't understand how that argument got them the time of day, either. But common sense has prevailed. Pringles may not exactly seem like potato chips, but they're a lot closer to that than, say, Twinkies.

Now that's got me wondering. In a contest between Pringles and Twinkies, which would decay first?

Sidetracking the Torture Debate

2009-05-20T00:42:00.000-05:00

During my recent blogging downtime, I haven't been paying quite as close attention to politics as I had been, and I've got to admit that I'm a bit confused about the Republicans' recent tactics on torture. The CIA released a memo claiming that Nancy Pelosi was briefed on its torture tactics way back in 2003. Pelosi claims that she wasn't. So the GOP has taken the opportunity to pile on Pelosi and implicate her in whatever backwash all this torture has. One of the strongest arguments to this effect appeared in The Wall Street Journal under Karl Rove's byline: "If she knew what was going on and did nothing, does that make her an accessory to a crime of torture, as many Democrats are calling enhanced interrogation?"

Does he really want to go there? You don't need to follow that line of argument very far to see that it can't end well for Rove and his compatriots. Apparently, the idea is some sort of blackmail--if you implicate us, we'll implicate you back! That line might have some juice if being an accessory were worse than being a perpetrator. Matt Yglesias points out what else is wrong with this tactic:

But in their zeal to score a tactical win, the right has made a truth commission more likely not less likely. Obama wanted to avoid a backward-looking focus on torture in part because it distracted from his legislative agenda. But if we're going to be looking backward anyway, thanks to conservatives' insistence on complaining about Pelosi, then the move forward strategy lacks a rationale. And far from forcing a standoff in which Pelosi will abandon her support for an investigation, the right has forced her into a corner from which she can't give in to moderate Democrats' opposition to such a move without looking like she's cravenly attempting to save her own skin.

There's no sign that Pelosi or anyone else is backing off the truth-commission idea. And, indeed, by suggesting that Pelosi could be a target of an investigation, conservatives have helped cleanse the idea of the odor of victor's justice.

That last line raises another question. When can we expect David Broder going to take the Republicans to task for scapegoating Pelosi out of vengeance?

It's Monty Python Night Tonight!

2009-05-09T12:27:00.001-05:00

We've got our tickets to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Terry Jones tonight. Mrs. Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk is making her plans to start getting a picture with and/or autograph from the second half of the Pythons (she's already got a snapshot with the difficult one, so it's all downhill from here). To get further into the mood, here's an article from earlier in the week from the Trib with some facts about the movie. One very disappointing note for me comes when they talk about how the film was financed. Against my better judgment, I guess I have to be appreciative to Andrew Lloyd Webber about something after all.

Postscript: Yes, it looks like this is turning into a special events blog. That's not my intention, but it seems to be the way things are working out for now. I'll try to do better as my various nonblogging responsibilities seem to tamp down for a bit.

Free Comic Book Day

2009-05-01T23:52:00.000-05:00

When I wrote a few weeks ago that I was going to slow down on my blogging, I had no idea that I'd end up being as busy as I've been. I hadn't intended to go quiet for two weeks, but, well, here we are. It's a good thing that there wasn't much going on in the outside world while I had to devote all my time to my latest work project (which will be a nice book on the national parks come August, or so). I'm glad that I came to my own decision on the matter, though, because I would've had to quit for a few days anyway, but I would've been much more upset if I'd been forced to end my streak of daily posts rather than choosing to end it on my own terms.

There is an awful lot to catch up on, and I'm not sure exactly how much I'll actually get to cover, but for the time being, I'll just remind you to go out and find your local comic book store and then drop in on Saturday for Free Comic Book Day. Just like I've been working and not paying as much attention to what else is going on, I haven't been paying attention to Free Comic Book Day, either, so I just took a look at what various companies are offering myself. There appear to be almost 40 different titles, some all ages and some not, and while you can't expect every store to have every title, the bigger comics will be in most places. If you're not sure where your closest comic store might be, the Free Comic Book Day site has a locater that can tell you which ones are participating. For those of you looking for autographs, various creators will be appearing all over the country.

Go explore comic stores near you and find out what intrigues you (for free or otherwise). Then come back here to report how you liked what you got.

Record Store Day

2009-04-18T00:32:00.000-05:00

What music are you planning to buy on Saturday? It's Record Store Day, so whatever you get, make sure that you buy it in a record store. It's seemed to me that record stores are getting fewer and farther between, a perception that's only reinforced when Stereogum opens its Record Store Day story by asking, "When's the last time you went to an actual record store? Like where you have to walk through a door and can't just click 'download'?" Is it that unusual nowadays to go to a record store and browse? Maybe it is. So that's all the more reason to hit the stores tomorrow.

This event just seems to be growing and growing--this year is chock full of record stores with special programming. Check the interactive U.S. map for who and where (or, outside of the States, here's an international page (with seventeen countries featured). Also, a number of artists are providing limited vinyl releases, mostly singles, but a few albums. Here's a list of what was scheduled to be available. Douglas Wolk helpfully offers his own run down of much of those releases at Pitchfork, although he also reports that the offerings from Elvis Costello and Modest Mouse, as well as a New Order reissue, aren't going to make the deadline by tomorrow.

Who's Tea-Bagging?

2009-04-15T13:09:00.000-05:00

Today is Tax Day. The right wing is going crazy with its tea-bagging--and they claim they're going to have tea party protests, too. I'd do a Google search to see if there are any good images from the demonstrations, but I'm afraid much of what I'd find would be "not safe for work," and I'd prefer to hold on to this job for the time being, thank you.

The protests are supposed to take their inspiration from the Boston Tea Party (which all of a sudden makes more sense when you realize Sam Adams was brewing beer and the plot was likely hatched down at the alehouse), but I'm not sure quite how far you get with the line, "Taxation with representation, but we're still mad about it anyway." Steve Benin may have the best explanation:

So, at some point in the future (we don't know when), some politicians (we don't know who) might find it necessary to raise taxes. Whose taxes would be raised? It's too soon to say. How much would taxes go up? No one knows.

But the mere prospect of a possible future tax increase has led untold thousands of activists, an entire cable news network, corporate lobbyists, conservative bloggers, conservative talk-radio hosts, and Republican officials to organize a series of national events. With extraordinary foresight, they've organized thousands of rallies to register their outrage, not at existing tax rates, but at tax policies that haven't been proposed, but might exist at some undermined point.

The best line about all of this, though, came from David Shuster Monday night on Countdown. He'd just discussed how one of the prime movers in the tea-bag movement was former House Majority Leader Dick Armey.

If you are planning simultaneous tea bagging all around the country, you're going to need a Dick Armey.

We'll be back with more family-oriented material soon, as long as the right wingers will lay off the blatant set ups.

Happy Easter!

2009-04-12T07:37:00.000-05:00

Mixing Media

2009-04-11T00:35:00.000-05:00

I'm way behind on this. Eddie Argos had this picture on his blog back in February, and Art Brut announced it on their page a week before that. Jeff Lemire posted it last week, on both his blog and the Standard Attrition group blog. Heidi MacDonald picked it up from there. And now I'm mentioning it.

I have to admit that Jeff Lemire and Eddie Argos/Art Brut aren't the most obvious team-up, but it's not that surprising. Argos is already on the record about being in love with Lemire's Essex County trilogy (even though he's admitted that hockey and farming are not what draw him to read comics), having praised it up and down in his sometimes comics review column that I've mentioned before. He even told The Daily Cross Hatch that he wanted to write the soundtrack for an Essex County movie (no, there's no actual Essex County movie underway that I've ever heard). Although Art Brut was nothing close to the music going through my mind when I read those books, I've got to appreciate the enthusiasm. On the other hand, I've also noted my appreciation for Lemire and his work, so I'm glad to see him get the recognition and acclaim.

Art Brut vs. Satan is out on April 21, too late for Record Store Day, but buy it from your local record store (if you still have one) anyway. Aside from the lovely Jeff Lemire cover, you'll get a record produced by Frank Black/Black Francis/that guy from Pixies and featuring a song called "DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshake." Take a look at the video for the first single, "Alcoholics Unanimous," at the Art Brut announcement page. It's got that old Art Brut joie de vivre and bodes well for the album.

The Case on Torture

2009-04-08T23:53:00.000-05:00

This week's New Yorker has an interesting piece on Philippe Sands, the English law professor and barrister whose book Torture Team may have played a large part in getting the ball rolling in Spain on potential criminal charges against Alberto Gonzales, Douglas Feith, John Yoo, and others in the Bush administration for torture. Sands delved into the problem of torture during the Iraq War after seeing the Abu Ghraib pictures.

Sands said that he read the protestations of innocence from Bush Administration officials, who blamed a few "bad apples" for the incidents, with the eye of a barrister. He recalled, "I could spot right away that they were speaking as advocates of a cause. So I decided to find out what really happened."

He was able to get access to a number of people involved, actually conducting interviews with Feith and others. The more he explored, the more unhappy he became.

"I spent two years trekking around the country, finding out that they were manifestly untruthful," Sands said. "I've got a particular bugbear about lawyers," he added. "If not for lawyers, none of these abuses would have ever occurred."

One of the Spanish lawyers trying to bring the charges has given Sands credit for identifying "who the targets were." It's far too soon to know what will become of these efforts, but for the time being, those particular ex-Bushies should probably keep all their traveling domestic.

He Called It

2009-04-07T00:58:00.000-05:00

Although he had them defeating Louisville for the national championship, Barack Obama picked North Carolina to go all the way. Is there anything this guy can't do? Watch him work it out.

It's My Blogoversary

2009-04-06T21:06:00.001-05:00

Four years ago, I started this blog up as sort of a whim, as an argument with myself that, as a writer, I should be writing. The blogoverse was much different back then. Although there were people who were making money with their blogging, it wasn't seen as the professional concern that it's since become. Daily Kos has turned into a monster of sorts; Talking Points Memo is a full-fledged journalistic operation; and they're not the only two, by any means. A number of bloggers have taken professional positions with magazines or organizations that allow them to put all their energies into blogging.

My ambition was to expand awareness of myself as a writer, and I may or may not have done that. I realized very quickly, though, that in as fast-paced an online world as we were even four years ago, that I had to provide regular updates to get people coming back. Although I rarely made this promise explicit, I vowed to myself that I'd have at least one thing posted (more than that if possible) every day as I was getting established. I figured that I'd do that for a while, and then once I had some sort of a following, I could maybe let up. Partly because my following never really numbered more than a handful and I was still looking to expand, I've put up content for every day of the last four years. Sure, sometimes I complained (although I hope I never got too whiny), and sometimes there wasn't very much, but there was always a daily presence on the blog.

Now we've reached a point, though, when Jim Henley (still at least ostensibly my compatriot at Howling Curmudgeons, although posting at that site has withered quite a bit itself, lately) can write a post about bloggers who post too much (even if it was helping to set up his later April Fool's post and is thus not trustworthy as a serious post itself, his point is still a good one). As much as I enjoy blogging (and, even when I've gotten annoyed with it, you can safely presume that I've enjoyed it or I wouldn't have kept it up this long), I can't be one of those guys. Since I started blogging, I've been promoted in my regular job to a position with more responsibilities and demands on my time, and I simply can't keep all of it up. If you're one to look at posting times, mine were mostly live--that's when I really wrote and posted (although that Hulk baseball one was a lie; I really put it up just a bit after 2:00 AM, but I didn't want it to be right on top of the previous post). When you add those times with the extra hours I've been putting in at work, it all adds up to me being spent.

So I'm not stopping blogging, but I am ending my commitment to have a new post every day. I'm no longer going to sit up and refuse to go to bed until I've written something. Maybe I'll start getting some sleep and posting ideas that aren't so worn and threadbare. It's possible that this might even be a good thing. (I'm sure Mrs. Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk will be pleased.)

I went back to look at a few of my earliest posts, and I was pretty upfront with the idea that I didn't necessarily know what I was getting into. That's the case now, too. I'm not sure which way this will go. Will I rarely write something new to go up? Or will the lack of a solid deadline free me up to write almost as frequently as I have been doing? I don't know. I guess we'll find out.

Batter Up!

2009-04-06T08:12:00.000-05:00

Another Opening Day. Go Red Sox!

More Doom and Gloom

2009-04-06T01:37:00.000-05:00

Sorry. It's hard to escape it these days. Salon.com put up an interview with Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. It originally appeared in Der Speigel before the G-20 conference, and it touches on many of the same criticisms that we've been hearing, but I guess we just need to keep seeing those criticisms over and over until we start taking them to heart.

Many people are comparing the financial crisis to the Great Depression. Will it really be that bad?

It's going to be bad, very bad. We're experiencing the worst downturn since the Great Depression, and we haven't reached the bottom yet. I'm very pessimistic. Governments are indeed reacting better today than during the global economic crisis. They're lowering interest rates and boosting the economy with economic stimulus plans. This is the right direction, but it's not enough.

The American government has committed over a trillion dollars to save the banks and $789 billion to boost the economy. Do you think this is too little?

I do. More than $700 billion sounds like a lot, but it's not. On the one hand, a large part of the money will first be given out next year, which is too late. On the other, a third of it is drained away by tax cuts. They don't really stimulate consumption, because people will save the majority of that money. I fear that the effect of the American economic stimulus plan won't be even half as big as expected.

At least governments worldwide are bracing themselves against the recession, as opposed to the global economic crisis where they accelerated the recession through their savings policy.

That's right. That's why I'm confident we'll get off lighter than during the Great Depression. On the other hand, there's a series of developments that make me very anxious. The state of our financial system, for example, is worse than it was 80 years ago.

Well, maybe it's not completely doom and gloom. Read it all to get a hint of how we need to address our problems.

New Trends in Same-Sex Marriage

2009-04-05T01:30:00.000-05:00

California might not have been able to pioneer on the issue, but apparently the heartland is coming through. On Friday, the Iowa Supreme Court overturned the state's ban against same-sex marriage that's been in place since 1998. California, of course, briefly allowed same-sex marriage when its own Supreme Court upheld it, but voters passed Proposition 8 to overrule the court. It's certainly possible that voters in Iowa might attempt a constitutional amendment to accomplish the same thing there, too, but the specifics of Iowa law means that such a vote couldn't take place for at least a couple of years. That means there will be at least that long for gay and lesbian couples to get married in Iowa, but there's another factor to consider, as well. Attitudes are changing, and--so far, at least--they seem to be moving toward tolerance of same-sex marriage. Nate Silver worked out a model to determine the point at which states are more likely to vote on against such a ban than to support it. He used three variables:

1. The year in which the amendment was voted upon;
2. The percentage of adults in 2008 Gallup tracking surveys who said that religion was an important part of their daily lives;
3. The percentage of white evangelicals in the state.

He found eleven states likely to defeat a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage right now. More importantly for the subject at hand, however, Silver predicts that Iowa would be willing to vote against a ban in 2012, which may well be their first opportunity to do so. Is same-sex marriage here to stay in the heartland? Very possibly the answer to that is yes.

Sliding Further Down

2009-04-04T02:55:00.000-05:00

Unsurprisingly, unemployment for March was up again. Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, Robert Reich wrote today that conditions are worse than we've previously thought. It's a depression.

The March employment numbers, out this morning, are bleak: 8.5 percent of Americans officially unemployed, 663,000 more jobs lost. But if you include people who are out of work and have given up trying to find a job, the real unemployment rate is 9 percent. And if you include people working part time who'd rather be working full time, it's now up to 15.6 percent. One in every six workers in America is now either unemployed or underemployed.

Every lost job has a multiplier effect throughout the economy. For every person who no longer has a job and can't find another, or is trying to enter the job market and can't find one, there are at least three job holders who become more anxious that they may lose their job. Almost every American right now is within two degrees of separation of someone who is out of work. This broader anxiety expresses itself as less willingness to spend money on anything other than necessities. And this reluctance to spend further contracts the economy, leading to more job losses.

He has some ideas of how to address the problems, although they aren't particularly different from much of what we're hearing from others. It's nice to see them listed out, nice and neat.

This is still not the Great Depression of the 1930s, but it is a Depression. And the only way out is government spending on a very large scale. We should stop worrying about Wall Street. Worry about American workers. Use money to build up Main Street, and the future capacities of our workforce.

Energy independence and a non-carbon economy should be the equivalent of a war mobilization. Hire Americans to weatherize and insulate homes across the land. Don't encourage General Motors or any other auto company to shrink. Use the auto makers' spare capacity to make busses, new wind turbines, and electric cars (why let the Chinese best us on this?). Enlarge public transit systems.

Meanwhile, extend our educational infrastructure. So many young people are out of work that they should be using this time to improve their skills and capacities. Expand community colleges. Enlarge Pell Grants. Extend job-training opportunities to the unemployed, so they can learn new skills while they're collecting unemployment benefits.

Finally, accelerate universal health care.

These are awfully ambitious, and I can't say that I'm excessively hopeful all of it will come to fruition. But this has to be the direction we try to go.

Now We're Talkin'

2009-04-03T01:30:00.000-05:00

The indictment against Rod Blagojevich has come through, and there's more to it than there looked to be back in December. There are 16 felony counts here, which could lead to serious prison time if he's convicted. Because he probably couldn't get a contract for a TV commercial to announce he's going there, Blago and his family are reportedly already in Disney World.

The previously expected charges--which included the attempts to sell Obama's senate seat, the plan to force the Trib to fire a reporter Blago didn't like, and various shakedown efforts for "campaign contributions"--were supplemented by efforts to blackmail a Congressman (unnamed in the indictment but reputed to be Rahm Emanuel), and a long-time conspiracy with Tony Rezko and other, put into place before Blago even took office, to use the governor's office to rake in the dough that would be collected and then distributed among the participants after Blago was out of office. Take a look at the statement released by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's office, or take a look at the actual indictment.

Not surprisingly, Blago released a statement of his own saying that he's "saddened and hurt but . . . not surprised by the indictment." Oh, and by the way, he wants to remind us that he's innocent.

April Fool's Wrap Up

2009-04-02T04:05:00.004-05:00

[UPDATED BELOW]
So it turns out that the Conficker virus didn't have much of an effect after all, although this story out of San Francisco suggests that the infected machines are still out there and may show themselves at some point in the future. If it was some sort of an April Fools' prank, it sort of fell flat.

But were there other decent April Fools' activities this year? A lot of them certainly seemed heavy handed to me, nothing especially nimble enough to trick us into falling for them, but some clever nonetheless. A very nice joke came from Trent Reznor, announcing the new Timbaland-produced Nine Inch Nails album, giving a little (or a big) tweak to Chris Cornell. The Guardian had an interesting idea, transferring all their archives into Twitter tweets. Not believable, particularly, but some of their examples were funny:

A mammoth project is also under way to rewrite the whole of the newspaper's archive, stretching back to 1821, in the form of tweets. Major stories already completed include "1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!"; "OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more"; and "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?"

National Public Radio usually goes for something today, but I have to say I wasn't overly impressed--their efforts in previous years have slipped past my guard. Morning Edition went for a story of Econoland, a new theme park run by The Economist. All Things Considered tried a bit of an end run, hiding its April Fools joke inside listener comments on a story yesterday about an Illinois whale farm that was too over the top for my money.

The funniest joke I heard came from a very unexpected source. Glenn Beck made himself the butt of the joke today by going back on his frequent warnings that Obama and the Democrats are leading us to socialism. No, he's just discovered that the road is one to fascism, instead. He says that it's a course we've been headed to since the days of Teddy Roosevelt more than 100 years ago. If this isn't a joke and Beck is correct, at least we can take heart in the fact that, if we've been moving toward fascism for more than 100 years and this is as far as we've got, at least we're not very good at it. On the other hand, if Beck has identified an actual threat to our society, well, there can only be one response.

UPDATE--The best April Fool's joke was one I didn't see until April 2. Steven Grant described how Rupert Murdoch is in the process of buying DC Comics out from under Time Warner. He set it up in a way that left me going, "I don't think that's true." Well done!

Conwhater?

2009-04-01T00:17:00.000-05:00

I've been checking the computer tonight in advance of the big Conficker attack on April 1. (Surely some newscaster somewhere has mispronounced that word--who's got the video?) I was able to access the Web sites of McAfee and Symantec, which are supposed to be off limits to infected computers, so I guess I'm OK. Of course, nobody knows what it might do if it's indeed activated on April 1. It's actually not too bad an April Fools' prank to make the whole world quiver over what damage might occur and then have nothing happen--would that mean that Conficker was never a danger, or is it just waiting until a day when no one's watching to go crazy. CNET is live-blogging the day as midnight progresses across the globe, promising that it will be "updated continually," but as of this writing, we're going on three hours since the last update, which basically said nothing much seems to be happening. My favorite headline on the issue comes from a Washington Post blog on Friday: "Conficker: Doomsday, or the World's Longest Rickroll?" I guess we'll find out soon.

The Last March Readings

2009-03-31T13:21:00.003-05:00

I'm overwhelmed with work deadlines again (is there ever a time when I'm not?--I'm not sure anymore), and it completely slipped my mind to remind everyone to check out Stockyards Theatre Project's final March play and scene readings tonight. (It's the final one because today's March 31--clever how that works out, isn't it?) We'll be back at Eisenhower Public Library in Harwood Heights. Tonight's presentation will feature The Many Faces of E.G.O. by Earliana McLaurin and Water Colored Roses by Jessica Marking. Both are new pieces--no recycling from previous readings--so if you've already been a faithful participant, you haven't seen these before. Eisenhower Library is at 4613 N. Oketo in Harwood Heights, and things get started at 7:00. Like all of these performances, admission is free. Come on out and see some great new theater in the making!

The Torture Regime

2009-03-31T02:43:00.000-05:00

Now that the Bush administration is no longer in office, is there a stronger will to make officials own up to the consequences of their acts? It seems like there's a little bit more willingness to look at the situation, but we'll have to hold our breath to see how it develops.

For the time being, though, we had a front-page story in Sunday's Washington Post about the waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" of Abu Zubaida, the Bushies' highest-profile detainee. Bush himself argued that information gleaned from "tough questioning" of Zubaida was integral to the success of the War on Terror, yet somehow the headline read, "Detainee's Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots." How could that have possibly happened?

We all know the answer to that question, of course. In Monday's Post, Dan Froomkin takes a look at the Sunday piece and points out that, although it's good to get the attention now, this information isn't exactly new. Ron Suskind discussed this in his 2006 book, The One Percent Doctrine. Froomkin talked about it then (and, now that you mention it, so did I), but with more than two years left until Bush left office, nobody seemed to want to pay attention. Today do we live in a whole new world? I don't know, maybe. Will people pay attention to it now? I suspect they will a little bit more now than they did then. It's a slow build, but at least it's building. Maybe one day it will lead to actual justice.

To Salon or Not to Salon?

2009-03-30T03:38:00.001-05:00

Ever since Salon.com went to a pay system a few years ago, I've bought a subscription. You got to do away with the ads, and there were a few other perks that came with the purchase. I don't recall off the top of my head exactly how much it costs, but I believe it's somewhere around thirty dollars. I've figured that it's money I can afford for a worthy cause.

This past year, though, for some reason my member name and password never seemed to take in the memories of either of the computers I normally use. Each time I'd try to read an article, it would ask for my name and password anew. At some point, though, it stopped asking. Every now and then, I'd see an ad pass by before I could access the story I wanted, but I've generally got several things going on with the computer, so I could just slip over to another screen until it was finished. Most of the time, however, it would just take me directly to the page I was seeking. I suppose it put pop-ups on my screen, but other sites do that, too, and I was never specifically aware of a particular pop-up caused by Salon. (And, since I've always got a pop-up blocker running, maybe I haven't even seen one.) So they've shown me that I can get along quite well without a subscription.

My sub is up in about a week, and I'm getting the reminder notices to renew. At this point, I'm not sure when was the last time I've actually logged in. One thing I'd lose is access to their Table Talk message board feature, but I never particularly participated in that anyway. There are other magazine subscriptions they usually offer, but, although I never minded receiving them, I often wouldn't have time to read the issues, they'd start to pile up, and ultimately Mrs. Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk would ask, "Who started sending us this?" I've checked their sign up page (from the outside, not as a renewing member), and I'm not really sure what to make of it. They offer nine different membership plans (although most of the difference is just in deciding which free book you want), and I'm not entirely sure what the difference is. I'm also not sure how far I have to venture into the sign-up process to discover what the price is.

On writing about this, I feel like I'm talking myself into not renewing--I'm really not that sure I see why it's necessary. My subscription doesn't lapse for a few days, though, so if anyone wants to make an argument one way or another, I'm willing to listen. My mind isn't entirely made up yet, so who knows--maybe I'm ripe for swaying.

Quick Hits

2009-03-29T02:42:00.000-05:00

• The good news is that it appears that Fargo has avoided the worst predictions for the Red River. Forecasters now believe that the river crested last night at 40.82 feet, more than two feet below expectations. The cold weather that's seemed to work against residents as the sandbags froze may have been their salvation. Water that otherwise would have been adding to the level of the river is frozen and holding off for just a little bit longer. Part of the problem has been snow melt, and freezing temperatures keep that much more snow from melting. The forecast still calls for another week or so of raised river levels, so nothing's certain until the water starts receding. But it's a better situation than it looked like it was going to be.

• I'll admit to complete selfishness in making sure that I had my tickets all lined up before I passed this on to everybody else. But now I do, so I'll let you know that I'm planning to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Terry Jones in a few weeks. He's making an appearance at Chicago's Lakeshore Theater, where we'll see the movie and then pepper him with questions. The show's announcement was made earlier this week, and as of a couple of days ago there were still tickets, though I can't say how long they may last.

• We started talking about the weather, so we might as well end on it, too. Al Gore is writing another book on global warming, and I can only hope that he'll include information about a situation I just discovered last week. The movie The Blob was on last weekend, and when Steve McQueen and his pals finally figured out how to combat it, they sent it up to the arctic wastes. It seems that, although the creature can't be killed, it can be frozen into a sort of stasis. The final line in the movie announces that the world will be safe from the blob "as long as the arctic stays cold." I trust Gore will use this as another argument to reinforce the gravity if global warming.

About the Weather

2009-03-28T03:03:00.001-05:00

For anybody who thinks that the equinox earlier this week has any bearing on it actually being spring, just watch out for the accumulating snow we're supposed to be getting over the weekend. But that would still be preferable to what Fargo, North Dakota is going through at the moment. The Red River is reaching record heights--even higher than expected--and the sandbags may or may not be stacked high enough. It looks like there'll be no John Wayne, Montgomery Clift (hey, where did I see that guy?), or even Frances McDormand to ride to the rescue this time. If the cresting river itself weren't enough of a problem, the temperature in Fargo is far below zero, so the sandbags being used to prevent flooding are freezing instead. One official compared them to frozen turkeys--not the most effective tool to be deflecting water.

There's talk now that the river will wait until Sunday to crest. Although this gives more time for Fargo to prepare, I'm not sure what more they can do. And once the river crests, the National Weather Service says that the water won't start receding for about a week. Residents along the Red River still have a ways to go before anything starts getting back to something like normal. Keep watching the news to see how it all develops.

The Market Mystique

2009-03-27T02:06:00.002-05:00

I'm ridiculously busy these days, so I fear all I've got to offer tonight is a link to Dr. Krugman in Friday's NYTimes. And in case you think you can't be bothered to click over to his remembrances of the wondrous days when banks enticed you with free toasters (and that was considered enough), here's his open:

On Monday, Lawrence Summers, the head of the National Economic Council, responded to criticisms of the Obama administration's plan to subsidize private purchases of toxic assets. "I don't know of any economist," he declared, "who doesn't believe that better functioning capital markets in which assets can be traded are a good idea."

Leave aside for a moment the question of whether a market in which buyers have to be bribed to participate can really be described as "better functioning." Even so, Mr. Summers needs to get out more. Quite a few economists have reconsidered their favorable opinion of capital markets and asset trading in the light of the current crisis.

But it has become increasingly clear over the past few days that top officials in the Obama administration are still in the grip of the market mystique. They still believe in the magic of the financial marketplace and in the prowess of the wizards who perform that magic.

Now go and click.

John Hope Franklin

2009-03-26T02:26:00.000-05:00

Dr. John Hope Franklin, one of the architects of black history studies, died on Wednesday night. When I took a black history course nearly thirty years ago, we used Dr. Franklin's text, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans. He'd published the first edition of it more than thirty years prior to that. (I've still got my copy around here somewhere.) Dr. Franklin was 94 years old, which means that he was born before the United States entered World War I. His grandparents had been slaves, and he lived through some of the worst of Jim Crow America. Walter Dellinger, a Constitutional lawyer who taught beside Dr. Franklin at Duke University, has a lovely remembrance in The Washington Post. You should go and read the whole thing, but this is a nice overview of some of his most important accomplishments:

He worked on a crucial brief for Brown v. Board of Education, he marched in Selma, he lectured all over the world and he taught all of America to see through his uncompromising eye. But it was not just what he did but how he did it that marked his greatness. He understood that the public good was not merely a set of substantive outcomes; it is also defined by how we go about reconciling our competing visions of that public good. It is about how we view one another when we peer across the great divides of policy, preference, political party and personhood. John Hope Franklin looked at those who opposed him and saw fellow human beings.

President Obama issued a statement saying:

Because of the life John Hope Franklin lived, the public service he rendered, and the scholarship that was the mark of his distinguished career, we all have a richer understanding of who we are as Americans and our journey as a people. Dr. Franklin will be deeply missed, but his legacy is one that will surely endure.

It is certainly meaningful that Dr. Franklin was able to live through the first two months of the Obama presidency. The Charlotte Observer helpfully posted a video of Dr. Franklin's reaction to that momentous occasion on the Website.

Goodbye, Dr. Franklin. You've earned your rest.

Tear Off Your Own Head

2009-03-25T01:13:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks back, a friend sent me this link, and I haven't had a chance to pass it on yet. It's mostly about newspapers falling by the wayside and the great What's Next?, but what's most interesting to me is this section:

Elizabeth Eisenstein's magisterial treatment of Gutenberg's invention, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, opens with a recounting of her research into the early history of the printing press. She was able to find many descriptions of life in the early 1400s, the era before movable type. Literacy was limited, the Catholic Church was the pan-European political force, Mass was in Latin, and the average book was the Bible. She was also able to find endless descriptions of life in the late 1500s, after Gutenberg's invention had started to spread. Literacy was on the rise, as were books written in contemporary languages, Copernicus had published his epochal work on astronomy, and Martin Luther's use of the press to reform the Church was upending both religious and political stability.

What Eisenstein focused on, though, was how many historians ignored the transition from one era to the other. To describe the world before or after the spread of print was child's play; those dates were safely distanced from upheaval. But what was happening in 1500? The hard question Eisenstein's book asks is "How did we get from the world before the printing press to the world after it? What was the revolution itself like?"

Chaotic, as it turns out. The Bible was translated into local languages; was this an educational boon or the work of the devil? Erotic novels appeared, prompting the same set of questions. Copies of Aristotle and Galen circulated widely, but direct encounter with the relevant texts revealed that the two sources clashed, tarnishing faith in the Ancients. As novelty spread, old institutions seemed exhausted while new ones seemed untrustworthy; as a result, people almost literally didn't know what to think. If you can't trust Aristotle, who can you trust?

During the wrenching transition to print, experiments were only revealed in retrospect to be turning points.

. . .
That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn't apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can't predict what will happen. Agreements on all sides that core institutions must be protected are rendered meaningless by the very people doing the agreeing. (Luther and the Church both insisted, for years, that whatever else happened, no one was talking about a schism.) Ancient social bargains, once disrupted, can neither be mended nor quickly replaced, since any such bargain takes decades to solidify.

I don't know whether it actually provides any comfort to recognize that we're entering an uncertain and somewhat anarchic time, but at least it takes the surprise out of it.

Time for Another Reading

2009-03-24T08:11:00.002-05:00

[UPDATED]
Stockyards Theatre Project's Playreading Series moves west tonight, over to Harwood Heights, where it will finish out Woman's History Month with a reading tonight and another one next Tuesday on March 31. On tap for tonight are two features, "Mimi & Mirna," a one-act by Naomi Finkelstein, and "A History of Two Broads in Two Acts" by Brenda Kilianski (I believe the second one will feature selected scenes). The action's expected to start up at 7:00 at Eisenhower Public Library, which is at 4613 N. Oketo in Harwood Heights. As always, it's free. If you're in Chicago, especially on the northwest side (although if you've got a car, you can be without too awful much trouble), drop in to support the arts, to support women's theater, and to support Stockyard Theatre Project (although not necessarily in that order).

UPDATED to add link and address clarification.

Where the Hell Are You, Man?

2009-03-24T02:23:00.001-05:00

Here's something that's cheesy, hoaky, and oddly compelling as it asks one of the pressing questions of the day.

(And if you're not sure why this is one of the most pressing questions of the day, read this and weep.)

Something Called "Money Well Spent"

2009-03-23T19:56:00.000-05:00

Back a couple of weeks ago, when Barack Obama addressed Congress (but did not deliver a State of the Union speech--no matter what it might've looked like), Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal delivered the Republican response. His delivery wasn't terribly well received, and he was the target of a fair amount of criticism about his content. Among many criticisms he had of the president and his budget, Jindal complained about $140 million set aside for "something called 'volcano monitoring.'" It's not entirely clear why he used that particular construction, as if he didn't really understand the purpose of the concept, because you'd think that the meaning of the term would be fairly self-evident. He might have questioned the program's usefulness, but he came off looking ill-informed by seeming not to comprehend it at all.

But if the usefulness of the program wasn't obvious before, it sure is now. It helped provide warning of something called a "volcanic eruption" in Alaska and make sure the area was properly prepared. Mount Redoubt in Lake Clark National Park and Preserve erupted on Sunday (and has erupted four more times since) after the mountain had been growing more and more active. So far I've seen no reports of injury. All involved in monitoring this volcano (with our tax dollars) should be appreciated for a job well done.

Misreading the Public Mood

2009-03-23T02:01:00.000-05:00

There are plenty of ins and outs surrounding our current economic meltdown, and I must admit that there's more going on than I can follow. But I've been very interested in how public perception has been playing into it all. Frank Rich takes a look at that in Sunday's column, "Has a 'Katrina Moment' Arrived?"

A charming visit with Jay Leno won't fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers' bonuses won't fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won't fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans' anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed. It would be foolish to dismiss as hyperbole the stark warning delivered by Paulette Altmaier of Cupertino, Calif., in a letter to the editor published by The Times last week: "President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived."

Six weeks ago I wrote in this space that the country's surge of populist rage could devour the president's best-laid plans, including the essential Act II of the bank rescue, if he didn't get in front of it. The occasion then was the Tom Daschle firestorm. The White House seemed utterly blindsided by the public's revulsion at the moneyed insiders' culture illuminated by Daschle's post-Senate career. Yet last week's events suggest that the administration learned nothing from that brush with disaster.

I wrote a few days ago that the AIG situation was a distraction from the larger problems we face, but it's a distraction that carries a lot of weight. The administration has been taking a far too paternal attitude, assuring us that they've got everything under control when clearly they do not. As Rich continues:

To get ahead of the anger, Obama must do what he has repeatedly promised but not always done: make everything about his economic policies transparent and hold every player accountable. His administration must start actually answering the questions that officials like Geithner and Summers routinely duck.

Inquiring Americans have the right to know why it took six months for us to learn (some of) what A.I.G. did with our money. We need to understand why some of that money was used to bail out foreign banks. And why Goldman, which declared that its potential losses with A.I.G. were "immaterial," nonetheless got the largest-known A.I.G. handout of taxpayers' cash ($12.9 billion) while also receiving a TARP bailout. We need to be told why retention bonuses went to some 50 bankers who not only were in the toxic A.I.G. unit but who left despite the "retention" jackpots. We must be told why taxpayers have so little control of the bailed-out financial institutions that we now own some or most of. And where are the M.R.I.'s from those "stress tests" the Treasury Department is giving those banks?

That's just a short list.

A short list, perhaps, but a longer one than Obama and his administration seem prepared to fulfill.

I Refuse to Call This Post Living in the Past

2009-03-22T04:34:00.000-05:00

On the latest Sound Opinions (the podcast isn't up yet for a direct link), the Sun-Times's Jim DeRogatis said that the new Decemberist's album, The Hazards of Life (due out on Tuesday) is the best album on "this ilk" since Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick. Now, once upon a time, I was a massive fan of Tull, and I considered Thick as a Brick to be their masterpiece. I did sort of lose much of my enthusiasm when I started following punk and new wave (which seemed to coincide with a change of direction and, for my money, a general decline in the quality of Tull's output), but I still enjoy a lot of their material before 1980. What DeRogatis was getting at in terms of the Decemberists, though, is that they're mixing folk music with the heavier guitar rock (there may have been some mention of metal, but "heavy metal" in 1972 meant something entirely different than it does now), which was very much what Tull was doing back then. DeRogatis was annoyed that, although the Decemberists namecheck various folkies as influences but never mention Ian Anderson or Jethro Tull. Sound Opinions only played some snippets, and if DeRogatis hadn't made the comparison, I must say that it wouldn't have occurred to me, so I'll have to hear the full album before arriving at my own opinion.

Another Tull tidbit that I haven't had a chance to drop into conversation yet concerns their 1976 album, Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young to Die! The cover, as well as the comics story that made up the gatefold sleeve, were drawn by Dave Gibbons, who went on to fame a few years later as the artist for Watchmen. I read an interview a while back in which he said that he wasn't particularly a fan of the band, though, but a record album job is a good gig.

Also, this one threw me for a bit of a loop a few years ago. As I've mentioned (and not even very long ago), I'm allergic to legumes, which makes Indian food a bit of a minefield for me. There's plenty that I can have at an Indian restaurant, I just need to know what I'm eating. So one night before I was getting ready to have an Indian meal, I thought I'd do a quick check on the Internet to see if I could identify which dishes I should stay away from. I don't remember exactly what I googled for, but I was essentially looking for a guide to Indian food. One site that came in near the top was Ian Anderson Indian food guide. I took a look and found it very informative, but I'd be curious what someone who's more conversant in Indian food might think.

Parking Woes

2009-03-21T00:58:00.000-05:00

Today's Trib had an update on the city of Chicago's efforts to raise parking prices efficiently. Well, not exactly the city of Chicago--more like the company that the city of Chicago leased it's parking to for 75 years at the price of $1.2 billion. Apparently, they're not doing such a great job. On the streets near Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk headquarters, parking has recently gone up from a quarter an hour to a dollar an hour. While that's still not terribly pricey, the fact that the meters are set up only to accept quarters means that you've got to feed it with eight quarters to park for two hours. Who has a constant supply of quarters with them? If you go even closer into town, the price is two dollars an hour, so you need sixteen quarters for the full two-hour term. If you're in the Loop? The Tribune says that it's up to seven dollars for two hours. Seven dollars? I did the math--that's a quarter for every 4.173 minutes. I'm not convinced that the mechanisms on the meters are that precise, but I guess I'm not really in a position to argue.

I don't know that everywhere has them yet, but a number of the streets downtown have replaced their coin meters with automatic meters that print out a tag for the time the cars are parked at that location. These machines can take nickels and dimes as well as quarters, but more importantly, they'll let you use a charge card. I was downtown on Wednesday evening, though, and it appeared to me that the printing meter near where I was parked was charging the previous three dollars an hour, or a simple five minutes for a quarter. This brings up another problem with the new parking meter company: They haven't updated all the meters. Sometimes they've changed the mechanism so that the meter will take more money, but they don't update the signage and notifications so that drivers will realize that they owe more money. And if they put in the amount they traditionally paid, the meter company will be by soon to give them a ticket.

And this doesn't even touch on the most annoying problem the meters have. If, in my neighborhood, they've gone from a quarter and hour to a dollar an hour, that means that they're receiving four times as many coins as they had been. Follow the logic a little bit, and you'll realize that this means they need to be emptied four times as often. Except that they're not. That means many of the meters are breaking down and not taking new coins--but if the meter doesn't say "Fail," there's no indication that something's wrong, and drivers who park there are going to be ticketed. The Trib offers a phone number, 744-PARK, to call if you're at a meter that's not working correctly. Ed Walsh, spokesman for the Chicago Department of Revenue, reminds us: "This can be used later as a defense to an issued ticket, if need be." A word to the wise.

Keeping It Stylish

2009-03-20T13:25:00.000-05:00

We've been dealing with some matters of editorial style at work the last couple of days, and oddly, what keeps running through my head is the first line of Vampire Weekend's "Oxford Comma."

No Longer Avoiding the Obvious

2009-03-20T02:57:00.000-05:00

I feel like I've somehow been ducking the financial situation, and AIG in particular, by not addressing it on the blog, but in truth, I feel like I've got nothing to add to the conversation. Sure, I'm angry at AIG (and whoever else) for taking taxpayer money and turning it back as obscene bonuses for people who don't deserve it, but all I've really got to offer is just more venting.

I think that the Obama administration is sort of in the same place. They can't quite get their act together on how to address this. The House jumped in, though, with a legally questionable bill to tax the bonuses back to the Treasury. Ezra Klein wonders if the AIG mess has ushered in a new era in which the public not only demands accountability from financial institutions but wants retribution, as well. It certainly could, and that's what the House seems to be responding to. But I also feel to some extent that the AIG bonuses are a distraction from bigger problems. It's a lot of money, to be sure, but we've got a much bigger issue of the entire financial system. We can't let this annoying development throw us off from where our attention really needs to be.

In Defense of Ringo

2009-03-19T03:07:00.001-05:00

I've got to say, I don't understand why there seems to be an undercurrent of Ringo Starr bashing these days. It's not everywhere, but I've seen it in a number of places. The most recent I've experienced, and the impetus of this post, was at Jersey Boys. Mrs. Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk had a couple of tickets, so we went to see it (we'd already seen it a bit over a year ago, too). There are a couple of cracks about the Beatles in the show, which aren't terribly surprising. The Beatles and the British Invasion certainly took a lot of attention away from them (although they continued to have a hefty presence on the charts). A decade and a half ago, I remember reading a column that I believe was in LA Weekly that basically argued that the Beatles had usurped the career and success that rightfully belonged to the Four Seasons. Be all that as it may, you could see how the Beatles might not be the Four Seasons' favorite group. At one point, the good news/bad news dynamic of the Ringo snub is introduced: you're in the Beatles, but you're Ringo.

It's been several decades, I know, and although Ringo had a number of solo hits in the '70s (at one point, I think he was the most commercially successful former Beatle), he didn't exactly hit the heights of artistic achievement. But while the Beatles were an ongoing concern, Ringo was a beloved member of the group. Take a look at any Beatle movie, and you'll see that there wasn't a hierarchy of Beatles, with Ringo bringing up the rear. Ringo was utterly charming and was as charismatic as John or Paul or George, completely holding his own. As a musician, his contribution was also important--the Beatles' music wouldn't be the same if anyone else were behind the skins. He deserves much better than this back-door disparagement that for some reason seems to have come his way.

A Couple of Things

2009-03-18T02:11:00.000-05:00

• How have I missed this!? Via Mark Evanier, I just discovered that General Mills is doing a retro packaging deal with Target. It's packaging a number of cereals such as Lucky Charms, Trix, Cocoa Puffs, and others in vintage boxes, but apparently they're only available at Target. In an Advertising Age article that's no longer available without a login (I saw it earlier tonight--it was dated March 3, I think, so I suspect it went behind the subscription curtain 15 days after it was first published), a General Mills spokesperson said that they weren't really promoting the situation, instead just hopping that it would get some exposure through blogs. I'm happy to do my part, but I always find it funny when people make something available and simply expect it to go viral. Because some videos or trends go viral with no obvious particular reason, some people just seem to believe that everything will go viral. I don't know that this is always the case across the board, but many "viral" campaigns are carefully seeded in particular outlets that will get exposure and start other people linking. Unfortunately, this offer doesn't seem to have gone as viral as General Mills might have preferred, and I almost missed it. Apparently, the offer ends on Saturday, March 21. In fact, I might've missed it anyway, if there were only limited amounts of boxes put on sale, they may all be gone with only four days of the offer left. On the upside, there are also some T-shirts involved, and those remain available (as supplies last, of course) for a few months. I suspect I know what I'll be doing with my next lunch hour.

• This story puts the lie to Dawn Steel's maxim that "they can kill you, but they can't eat you." I've always maintained that if they kill you, who's to stop them from eating you, if that's what they want to do? Nobody, that's who. And now we've got some empirical evidence to back that up.

Home Again

2009-03-17T03:36:00.000-05:00

I've written a bit about Edwyn Collins and his recovery from a brain aneurysm and two strokes (here, here and here). I'm a long-time fan of Edwyn and his band Orange Juice, but he never got much of a foothold on this side of the Atlantic either with the group or in his subsequent solo career. I always assumed that there was more coverage of his situation in the UK than there is here.

Tonight I came across a BBC Scotland documentary about Edwyn's efforts in returning to the recording studio and to live performing. Called Home Again after his first single since his health problems, it's a bit more than 30 minutes and is quite inspirational in parts. Initially, Edwyn was unable to speak or walk, but two-and-a-half years after the strokes, he was back onstage. We see Edwyn going through physical therapy, relearning how to read again (using 1984), and relearning the words to the songs he's written. I'll admit to one segment that completely choked me up. In the TV show, at least, he did not recover the use of his right hand or arm (an artists as well as a musician, he simply taught himself to draw left handed), so he doesn't play guitar, but he's in full voice. We don't see the whole gig at Dingwalls (broadcast by the BBC, no less), but we see enough to fully recognize how Edwyn persevered and triumphed. You can find the documentary on YouTube in four parts: Here's one, two, three, and four. It's well worth watching.

New Treatments for Food Allergies?

2009-03-16T01:36:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting new development in responding to food allergies, which never particularly had any treatment, except for treating symptoms once an allergy flares up. I suffer from peanut allergies, and although I don't have as extreme a condition as some I've heard of (up to 75 people die from peanuts each year in the United States), I get a noticeable allergic reaction from small amounts of peanuts (or peanut butter). That reaction is unpleasant enough that I'll avoid anything with peanuts or the possibility of peanuts.

Although they don't seem like they can do anything for me, findings from a couple of studies were presented on Sunday showing that exposing children to small amounts of peanuts daily can build a tolerance in them.

The new treatment uses doses of peanuts that start as small as one-thousandth of a peanut and eventually increase to about 15 peanuts a day. In a pilot study at Duke University and Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, 33 children with documented peanut allergy have received the daily therapy, which is given as a powder sprinkled on food. Most of the children are tolerating the therapy without developing allergic reactions, and five stopped the treatment after two and a half years because they could now tolerate peanuts in their regular diet. But four children dropped out because they could not tolerate the treatment.

In a related study of just 18 children, the researchers gave the treatment to 12 children and a placebo powder to 6. After 10 months, the children were given a medically supervised test exposing them to peanuts. In the placebo group, the children developed symptoms after ingesting the equivalent of one and a half peanuts. In the treatment group, the children tolerated 15 peanuts without symptoms.

It's only a start, and more research needs to be done before we'll know how certain these results are, but it's certainly hopeful for the children involved. At this point in my life, though, I suspect that it's too late to start taking minute amounts of peanuts. I'll continue having to do without the pleasures of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Relatively Few Watching the Watchmen?

2009-03-15T04:16:00.000-05:00

It's not looking too good for Watchmen, I'm afraid. After a good but not quite as good as expected opening, there have been some questions as to what kind of legs the film would have. All week long, despite remaining in the top position, the movie has--according to Box Office Mojo--dropped viewers from one day to the next. Monday will obviously be down from Sunday, but some of the films in the Top 10 went up a shade on Tuesday. Wednesday, down, but Thursday, perhaps in anticipation of a weekend coming up, is up almost across the board. Not Watchmen, though--it went progressively down further every day.

Friday was a new weekend coming up, and with only Race to Witch Mountain and Last House on the Left showing real potential to draw away from the hoped-for blockbuster, Watchmen was expected to hold on to its first-place position. That didn't happen, though. Witch Mountain took the top position, and Last House opened a surprising second. And don't hold out hope that the International receipts will come to Watchmen's rescue--it's got an even more disappointing reception there.

The weekend's just starting, though, so we'll have to see what Saturday and Sunday have in store. But if things are going the way they look to be going, it appears that Watchmen may not even hold on to its No. 1 ranking.

Comics Rising

2009-03-14T03:53:00.000-05:00

The comics biz (or parts of it, at least) seem to immune from the downturn in the economy. Sales figures (which in the case of comics means unreturnable sales from the publishers to the comic book stores--sell-through to the end consumer is pretty much guesswork) have been inconclusive as far as I've seen, but one place we can definitely see the numbers is in convention attendance. You'd figure (or at least, I would) that although some people might pay to come in and look around, that sales of merchandise would overall be down. It's not--in fact, recent shows have gone great guns. The New York Comic-con from just a bit over a month ago claimed that their numbers were up by 10,000 over last year, from 67,000 to 77,000. Vendors reported brisk sales.

You could wonder if that was some sort of East Coast fluke, but a couple of weeks later, San Francisco's WonderCon did knock-out business, with strong attendance and successful sales for venders. It doesn't just seem to be a lag until the economy catches up with the industry, either. On Friday, WonderCon's sister show, the massive San Diego Comic-Con International, sold out its 4-day full membership for 2009. That doesn't seem too surprising on its face, until you take into consideration the fact that the con is still more than four months away. Somebody at Comic-Con must be very, very happy. Of course, I'm not at all prepared to suggest what these numbers might imply for the rest of the industry. My assumption is that sales will tend to drop, and some stores might have to fold, but this kind of attendance at comics shows has to be circumstantial evidence that comics will weather the downturn just fine.

Just Thinking

2009-03-13T00:58:00.001-05:00

People who use the term insider baseball aren't really inside.

Twittering Our Lives Away?

2009-03-12T00:23:00.000-05:00

I've stated before that I don't tweet, and I haven't been hooked into any social networks (although I may be doing some dabbling). I've never really wanted to be that connected to things, so I haven't felt a need to rush into the new situations. Although at one time in my life I like to believe that I was a somewhat early adapter of some of the arts--particularly music, but movies to an extent, as well, but I never jumped into the new technology that quickly. At this point, I'd say I'm a downright late adapter. I put off getting a cell phone until I recognized that pay phones have become really hard to find.

So I'm somewhat familiar with Twitter--I've been to their site, and I've looked at a few pages. Although I can see how Twitter can be useful in particular situations, such as if you're meeting up with friends and want some quick updates about location, or even if you're doing something and need some quick advice or instruction. But I'm not sure I'm that interested in friends or other people to want to know their every move. And yet Twitter continues to expand.

A week ago, our pal Todd Allen wrote about Twitter for business at Chicago Tech News. He looked at some of the drawbacks of trying to follow enough feeds and getting an ad message out. A couple of days later, though, another friend sent me this link describing and entirely other (unintended by the Twitter creators, as far as I can tell) way Twitter can be helpful: as a search engine. I've dabbled a bit in Twitter search, and I've got to admit that I don't get it just yet. There are things to be found, of course, but I'm not sure how to either find what I want or figure out how to use what I find. I'd better catch up, though. The piece about Twitter search was followed on Monday by a Washington Post article about businesses turning Twitter to their own purposes. It'll be a whole new world soon. I guess I'd better start catching up.

Gingrich-Limbaugh, Round 2

2009-03-11T01:46:00.000-05:00

It wasn't the most daring prediction, I'll admit, but I was looking for the Limbaugh bite back against Newt Gingrich, and the blowhard didn't disappoint. Ben Smith had the full transcript, but a few highlights included:

• You know, I'm frankly getting tired of talking about Newt. I mean, it's a pointless exercise.

• I mean, next week Newt could come out and profess his total admiration and love for me if it would serve his purposes.

• They're running TV ads against me. Newt Gingrich wishes they were running TV ads against him. But they're running TV ads against me. So I love it. I'm up for it. I raise my hand. I'm the Last Man Standing.

He's not the last man standing yet, but he's making a grab for it. The serve now goes back to Gingrich. What's he got planned next? He's seen Rep. Phil Gingrey, Gov. Mark Sanford, and RNC Chairman Michael Steele cross Limbaugh and then grovel for his forgiveness, so he had to know how Limbaugh would react to his goading. Surely he's got something lined up, but you never know. Although I don't think he's an idiot, I do think that Gingrich's intelligence is usually overrated. Did Gingrich think he was too big for Limbaugh to attack? Did he think Limbaugh wouldn't notice? Or is Limbaugh playing right into his hands? Don't worry--I'll be staying tuned.

Hard Times in the Arts

2009-03-10T02:52:00.000-05:00

The tolls of the economy are beginning to be felt in the Chicago theater community. There have been various stories floating around. The House Theatre has cut back its season, and About Face Theatre must raise significant amounts of cash to keep their doors open (here's their donation page). Although Chicago Dramatists doesn't appear to be in danger of imminent failure, they're cutting back and making a new plea for donations.

Unfortunately, we seem to still be only at the beginning of the economic crisis. Things will definitely get worse before they get better. I'm more aware of the theatrical arts, but I suspect that we'll be seeing a winnowing out of arts organizations all the way across the board. Corporate profits are evaporating, so it goes without saying that corporate grants for the arts are drying up along with them. The Chicago public radio show Eight Forty-Eight presented a segment on Monday morning about how Chicago theater is faring. Listen here. I suspect we'll be talking about new developments on this topic as they arise.