Kinetic Loop

A skeleton with a cap in an office in the IBM building by the Trump Tower:

Closer:

I’m sure that Sears meant flip-flops, but I immediately assumed they meant thong underwear (similar to toboggan: a hat or a sled?):

One of the theaters by Millennium Park, either the Harris or the Children’s Theater:

Seen in Chicago craigslist:

“We are looking for a bald 48-52 year old Caucasian male for a stand in for “The Express” (Starring Dennis Quaid). This works tomorrow, Wednesday, all day. Rate of pay is $140/day. Please call Shelby at ….”

Important Bald Man doesn’t need the money, but he loves Dennis Quaid as Doc Holliday in Wyatt Earp, and likes to say “Mister, I’ve been in a really bad mood for the last few years, so I’d appreciate it if you’d just leave me alone. “

“we have a little more evidence that the world is really strange.”
An electron, Kerner told Hapgood, “defeats surveillance because when you know what it’s doing you can’t be certain where it is, and when you know where it is you can’t be certain what it’s doing.” More of the absurdity of discovering truth in space-time.

The paycheck’s always greener. . .
Whoa…rabbis make $98,610 a year??

Mystery fossil turns out to be giant fungus
“Scientists have identified the Godzilla of fungi, a giant, prehistoric fossil that has evaded classification for more than a century, U.S. researchers said on Monday.” Is this where I make a joke about Dick Clark?

The first Illy cafe opens in the U.S.
“There are no tables, only a stand-up bar on which patrons can rest an elbow, European-style.” Arm-wrestling is encouraged.

Human stains
Definitions of the seven deadly sins

Some wonderful old Penguin book covers from cityofsound

For China Miéville, the question is not how he got into children’s books, but how he got out of them in the first place. Michelle Pauli talks to him about monsters, the marginalisation of sidekicks - and evil giraffes. “I wanted to think of an animal almost universally considered adorable and make them a really scary baddie. So it had to be either giraffes or pandas.”

Storms Over the Novel
“Most of the authors of the books under review are interested in the duplicity and doubleness of the novel, its acts of disguise, contradiction, and suppression.”

Getting a close-up look at daily life in closed-off societies

Arctic nickel miners recall Soviet days fondly
“But despite complaints of isolation and low wages, today’s “Norilchanins” enjoy some of the comforts of the outside world. Insulated behind three layers of doors, some of the more senior and better-paid workers dine on reindeer steaks, sip cappuccino in trendy coffee houses and dance to visiting DJs from St Petersburg.”

Like the cicadas emerging from Chicago sidewalks, livestock is descending upon institutions. Coincidence?
Man brings donkey to testify in court

Drunken man parks horse in bank foyer

The Dark Knight crew was on Water Street just south of Michigan on Sunday. They had an “extras holding” area (electric fence?) somewhere down Wacker and one of these vans had a hair salon. The Hard Rock Hotel has some red scaffolding on the north and west sides (related?), and an orange helicopter was lowering a large piece of equipment to Water Street on Sunday morning. I love helicopters, so I spent way too much time over the weekend watching two of them.

We also went all the way to Van Buren and Canal on Sunday to see the massive post office, aka Gotham National Bank. Here’s the parking sign for “Rory’s First Kiss” and the front of the post office:

The east side of the post office:

“To City.” In case you get confused. At the Damen Brown Line station.

I presume that this black helicopter with the big white camera on the front of the fuselage was doing work for Dark Knight. This is a view from our apartment. It had come considerably closer, but I was too fixated on watching it to take a picture then. It did a couple of wide loops around the Hancock Center, went over to the river a couple of times around Michigan and Wacker (probably for buildings north and south of the river), passed the Carbide & Carbon building and Sears Tower heading south toward Millennium Park, then swung back around to the Hancock Center.

On Damen, just north of the Brown Line station:

…and their menu (but we didn’t eat there).

Also on Damen. A sink in a storefront. Duchamp, for Barneys New York. Just kidding. This won’t be winning the ISP/VM+SD International Store Design Competition anytime soon.

Be sure to catch this Beckett play at the Goodman Theater (look, if you have to ask…):

I love this medical building at Northwestern. One day I’ll have to head out to South Wells to see River City, that weird, pod-like high-rise apartment on South Wells. Tony Hale’s character Dave had a space-themed apartment there in Stranger Than Fiction (speaking of Goodman…).

A white truck with an el track pattern on the side:

And finally, a stage door in an alley:

I love these so much it makes me want to run around (via Jen Bekman):

• Lighting Out for the Territory

The coffee shop sign. The cars. The couple at the diner table. That orange diner. The monkey island sign. I’m swooning.

• Square America

A gallery of vintage snapshots & vernacular photography (don’t miss ‘The Road‘).

Revisiting Altman’s ‘The Long Goodbye’
“Chandler, who was over 60 when he wrote “The Long Goodbye,” clearly understood that the private eye’s time was passing, along with too much else he cared about”

David Sedaris and His Defenders
When I saw David Sedaris at the Chicago Theater on Easter Sunday, he started by talking facetiously about how not everything he says will be true. He mentioned how in one piece (probably for the New Yorker), he wrote that a car was red when it was actually blue, because he had already used the word “blue” in the previous sentence to describe a mood. And so on.

Mr. Byrne’s Professions
“But before finding his way into acting in his late 20s, he tried his hand at archeology, teaching and even short-order cooking.”

David Lynch’s compound harmonizes work, yoga
“Rather than focusing on designer surroundings, he has transformed much of his living space into high-tech production and post-production spaces.”

Casters and red crabs and felt pads and Fresca, locusts and sea slugs and splinters and cholera…

(These are a few unexpected gifts.)

And, unrelated, a hot dog stand, somewhere in Streeterville:

A Tribute to a Child’s Best, Bedraggled Friend
“Although much abused and maligned, these companions — the blankets, teddy bears, stuffed bunnies and dolls — stuck by you day and night.”

From Magnum, snapshots of Turkey’s complexities
“‘Turkey by Magnum,’ which runs through May 20 at the Istanbul Modern art museum, is, with 200 pictures, the largest photography exhibition ever held in Turkey.”

Two great posts by Jeremy Wagstaff:

Traffic Rules Part I
“The difference between a developed metropolis and a developing one isn’t transportation — it’s the rules and discipline about how that transportation is used.”

Traffic Part II: Rules That Don’t Work
“Watch how people get in and out of lifts. Do those who get in first move to the back of the lift, or do they sidle up to the controls and wedge themselves there like some amateur lift operator?”

How about waiting for people (typically over 50, I’ve noticed) to egress a lift car? The doors open, but they take so long to get out that you think the car is empty. So you start to go in, but then even more people egress and give you attitude for trying to get in the car, even though they took so long that the doors are closing as you enter. What the hell are they waiting for?

Bello the clown pleads for return of his mini-bike
“There was a reward, a toll-free tip line and a news conference — all for a lost little bike.”

Dottie: Pee-wee, how are you ever going to pay a reward like that?
Pee-wee: It’s simple. Whoever returns the bike is obviously the person who stole it. So they don’t deserve any reward!

Q&A with Starbucks CEO: “I’m just trying to keep it small as we grow”
“Q: Which foreign country will have the most Starbucks stores in five years?

A: I’ll tell you the region: Antarctica, for sure. But the opportunities in Europe are just as great, particularly filling in the U.K.”

Nah, just kidding. He actually said “Asia-Pacific,” not “Antarctica.” But I’m sure they’ve got someone on that project.

Q+A: Vera Wang’s Not Married To High-End Positioning
“I’m a big donut eater.” Please. I could pick up Vera Wang and swing her around like a flat loop lasso.

The Typing Life - How writers used to write
“Elisabeth Mann Borgese, a daughter of Thomas Mann, trained her English setter, Arlecchino, to type with his nose on a specially constructed electric typewriter. After about a year, and many dispensations of raw hamburger, Arli could type twenty simple words. He made a lot of typos, though, and when Borgese tried to induce him to record his own thoughts, without dictation, he got discouraged and started smacking the machine with his paw.” Yeah, I get like that, too.

And lastly, congrats to Danny Strong.