Kinetic Loop

If you…are thinking…of tailgating this car…Don’t!
If you…are thinking…of checking out this driver…Don’t!
Don’t!
Don’t!
Don’t!

I saw this truck the previous night, in the dark, near a hotel, and the light was perfect, but I didn’t have my camera. Argh.

The next two are by the construction near the Randolph and Wabash station, where they’re either digging to the earth’s core or building an elaborate pigeon house. The first one is a bit out of focus because I was in a hurry:

A giant crane tool for picking things up (the beige thing on the right, which I haven’t seen before). It had just been in action and was quite impressive, but by the time I got closer, it was union break time.

Highlights of the Chicago’s bunny brigades, from today’s Tribune:

• Rabbits even join the daily commute by bouncing along the on- and off-ramps of the Dan Ryan Expressway
• “I saw one recently in a revolving door of a skyscraper in the Loop”
• When the bulldozers move in, the bunnies will move out, surging into city streets
• “They’re practically man-eating!”
• …suggested selling the rabbits to local French bistros
• the only reason the rabbits haven’t made it to the roofs is that “the rabbits don’t know how to push the buttons of the elevators”

The eastern cottontail only wants us to think it doesn’t know how to push elevator buttons. When the time is right, they’ll make their move.

Nature has an interview with Al Jean, exec producer/head writer of The Simpsons and Harvard maths grad. “My favourite mathematical reference on the show was when we did an episode where Apu was a witness in a courtroom and the lawyer asked if he had a good memory. He said, yes I do, I’ve memorized pi to one million decimal places, and Homer said “mmm… pi” and started drooling.” I only memorized pi to 100, and now I’ve forgotten most of that.

Downtown Chicago’s street furniture
Yet another article from a Torontonian about a lesson Toronto could learn from Chicago. This time, it’s about street furniture.

Tender is the psycho
A long interview with David Lynch with a focus on Inland Empire, via Pop Candy.

Simpsons creator Matt Groening once looked on his talent as a curse. That was before 18 TV seasons and a new movie

Netflix lowers prices of two of its plans by $1 and shares go down. I’m aware of the intense competition with Blockbuster, but it’s not smart of Netflix to lower their prices. Netflix should instead charge customers for extra services, such as faster delivery of a replacement DVD if you get one that’s broken; and guarantee that the discs you get wouldn’t have been used more than a few times.

7-foot long giant squid invade Calif. waters
California should harness the power from the squid’s short-duration jet squirts to run electricity for Sand Hill Road.

The localvore’s dilemma
A few hundred consumers from Vermont have pledged to only eat food grown within 100 miles of where they live. The headline a year from now will be: Vermont consumers turn cannibal, start with neighbors.

Luxury hotels aim to please
“Case in point: For $60,000, a guest at The James can buy the Propose package, which includes a one-night stay in the hotel’s penthouse loft, a diamond ring from Van Cleef & Arpels and a private dinner accompanied by a string quartet from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. So far, no takers.”

I once spent a weekend at a Howard Johnson motor lodge to celebrate a significant bowling win. The motor lodge concierge remembered my preferences and I found, upon my arrival, my favorite Rick Springfield concert on tape and a six pack of Genesee beer.

No Chicago photos today. I just got back from a weekend in Lenox, Mass. It’s pretty, and the weather was much cooler there, but we were happy to get back to Chicago. There was too much time in a car, and I haven’t even been in a car since December. Also, in case you go, the restaurants in town had shitty service and were grotesquely overpriced. The dinner prices at a place called Napa was almost exactly the same as Phil Stefani’s 437 Rush, the food wasn’t nearly as good, and the service was almost nonexistent.

But none of that matters, because I went to Herman Melville’s old house, Arrowhead, and was in the study where he wrote Moby-Dick, a book I love and consider my favorite. The tour guide told us that Stephen King was on one of her tours, and said he got chills when he saw the study. The desk was in the center of the room, but according to Melville’s great-grandson, it would have been right up by this window, not set back. How amazing to look out the window that Melville looked out of while he wrote Moby-Dick. And on top of that, Stephen King was there (though he didn’t carve that message into any of the wood) and looked out of the same window.

The house, which is in Pittsfield (close to Lenox), was built in 1780. Melville bought it in 1850 and lived there for 13 years. Subsequent owners, including descendants, made a lot of modifications in the 20th century. What assholes. ‘Oh, Herman Melville lived here for 13 years and wrote Moby-Dick here, no big deal. Let’s make structural changes and tear down that piazza he built and close up the fireplaces he used.’ The Berkshire County Historical Society restored the study based on documentary and physical evidence (except for the desk, apparently), restored the original barn where he and Hawthorne would go to escape the house, and rebuilt the porch Melville had put in.

Mount Greylock is in the background of the window. The historical society said the mountain reminded Melville of a whale, that the mountain was his muse. Who knows. In the winter it probably looks more whale-like.

A broader view, from the porch:

A broader view of the study. According to Melville’s great-grandson , the desk would have been longer (and right up to the window). Melville didn’t have a harpoon there.

This is the chimney from “I and My Chimney,” in the dining room. I think that bench was Melville’s:

This banquet belonged to Melville:

Playing cards, just a period detail:

After three days on the road, Daniel Lewis and photographer Steve Christo join the non-stop party at Australia’s most famous outback race meeting. “Windorah’s form guide boasted race tips from “Gay WaterCloset”, “Bart Goings” and “Johnny Faucet” and runners with names such as Grab Mikrutch, Phar Ker Ewe, Camel Toe, Hump The Rump, Super Mega Fugly, Cho Kon It, Juicy Bits, Gut Bucket and The Groganator.” Camel Toe! Always funny.

On the Coudal blog: “IHOP is buying Applebees. Can’t wait for the Southwestern Monterey Jack Blueberry Ribs’n'Funnelcakes Combo.” Sounds like one of Agent Cooper’s hangover cures from Twin Peaks: “You start with a nearly frozen, unstrained glass of tomato juice. Drop a couple of oysters in there and chug it down. Breathe deeply. Next a heaping mound of sauteed sweetbreads with chestnuts and Canadian bacon. Finally some biscuits and a bucket of gravy, and here’s where it gets tricky, you’re gonna need some anchovies…”

Michael Cera’s comedy of raw adolescence
“So without commercial sponsors and focus groups, “Clark and Michael” unfolds in weekly bursts of 7 to 10 minutes long, filled with the awkward silences that Cera likes so much and plenty of absurdist low-key mockery of life on the show-business fringe, including one scene in which Cera, after having a script rejected, cries in a bathtub and refers to a well-known screenwriting guide.”

Canadian photographer’s giant pictures create their own reality
“Walking through the retrospective of his works the Art Institute of Chicago, Wall paused before “A View From an Apartment,” a scene he created in 2004-2005.”

Wall retrospective is picture perfect
“The images, self-evidently artificial yet oddly plausible (even in the phantasmagorical “Dead Troops,” featuring slaughtered Russian soldiers in Afghanistan revived for a ghostly chat) are the work of a perfectionist who knows exactly what he wants and how to achieve it.”

YouTube’s Dark Side
“What it comes down to, then, is that if you want your video to be seen, you have to post it on YouTube.”

Mark Cuban: YouTube is Doomed
(via The Tech Observer) “It seems to me that so much of YouTube’s success and model is based on the safe harbor—which seems really slippery.”

Virgin America to sell first tickets Thursday
“Virgin America said it plans to serve as many as 10 cities within its first year of operation, and up to 30 over the next five years.” Our savior! By the way: Southwest’s worst airport? Columbus.

“Yelp has two ambitions: Have fun and seize as much of the $100 billion local ad market as possible. “One of the first surprises was the length of reviews and the attention to detail,” says Simmons. “People think they have to write reviews of a certain quality or there’s no point. A lot of them are funny. Some are poetry. I saw one review in the form of an IM conversation with Skeletor.”

‘Mad Men’: You’ll buy what it’s selling
“Cigarettes are more than just the show’s opening ad subject. Sexy, oppressive, addictive, dangerous, they establish the mood for a show that hopes to come to grips with both what was lost and what has been gained since generation gaps, sexual revolutions, racial divides and Vietnam blasted the ’60s apart.”

Is it real, or is it Tex-Mex?
Mexico wants the world to know what food is authentic
“Barajas was among the 50 restaurant owners the government flew to Mexico City to hear culinary historians lecture on the importance of the nation’s food and sample traditional dishes such as grasshoppers and prickly pear jam, all from Oaxaca state in southern Mexico.”

“Uncertainty over the height of the streets led to a notorious capriciousness among Chicago sidewalks…Frequently it was necessary to walk from one sidewalk level to another several times in a single block, a hazard not without problems for the hoopskirted women. It was with justification that periodic signs warned the pedestrian to “Use Your Intellect”…The space under sidewalks was used for a number of purposes, though in popular conversation this area was chiefly noted as the abode of gargantuan rats. On the lake front, where the waters touched Michigan Avenue, the area under the walk was used as a mooring and shelter for rowboats. On the North Side, one ambitious citizen was found by a revenue officer to have dislodged the rats and installed an illicit distillery under the walk.”

Dedmon, Emmett. Fabulous Chicago. Random House: New York, 1953.

The Spice House should be your default choice for gifts. I don’t care if the recipient never makes anything more than frozen pizza — if they still have taste buds, get them something from the Spice House. If you cook or bake at all, then for the love of Elizabeth David, get your spices here. The two people working there on Sunday were nice as pie (mm, nutmeg). The owners were interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered in 2003.

I bought an International Salt Free Seasonings Blend gift box for a hostess gift, because you can use each seasoning with various dishes, an Italian Food Lover’s gift box — versatile, good for pasta, pizza and garlic bread — for a birthday gift; also a Back of the Yards Garlic Pepper Butcher’s Rub, and a salsa blend (mix with diced tomatoes, add water). They have Ethnic Chicago Neighborhood Blends (e.g. Bronzeville Rib Rub), and can make custom gift boxes out of any combo.

To get to the Spice House from downtown, take the brown or purple line north to the Sedgwick station, which has been relocated less than a block away at Hudson Ave. To get to the Spice House from the Hudson stop, just take a right on North Ave, then another right on Wells, and look for the shop on your right. The Sedgwick station will be relocated until December, according to the Chicago Transit Status site.

This Economist article, The history of spices is the history of trade, is mainly about the VOC and how awful (and lucrative) they were. It provides further reading about spices at the end.

In case anyone was thinking of using the Ryerson library at the Art Institute, I thought I would mention that the Libraries are closed for inventory through the month of July. This is something the AI has put in a small, bold, totally unnoticeable line of text on the Hours and Regulations page, in the same text color as the other text. It’s almost as though the AI wants you to waste your time going there.

The exhibit gallery is open, and you can search the catalog on site, but you can’t submit a call slip for anything in their stacks. Perhaps given a quantum superposition of realities, you would be able to access the stacks in a parallel universe, where the Ryerson is not only not closed, but running a bake sale.

People who are used to going to the Ryerson are probably not going to look at the Hours page; they may, however, check the main libraries page and access the catalog. And there’s nothing on either of those pages about closure through July. Thanks, Art Institute!