Daytripper

Happy Trails

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 04:45:00 +0000

Hey you! Yeah, you! This blog has moved.

All the posts have been transferred over to leeingalls.blogspot.com (aka Daytripper Unbound), where any blogging that may come will likely take place.

Thank you for your attention.

Dogwalk audio: Woodpecker streetlight

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:21:00 +0000

A minute of your time, please (literally):

See you in June

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:42:00 +0000

That's probably the next time you'll see a post hereabouts. In the meantime, we're packing like mad in anticipation of pulling up stakes and heading for Seattle. Thanks for everything Chicago, but it's time to make westing.

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Photo above via laflaneuse who merits watching.

Berkeley Streetcar 1906

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Fri, 01 May 2009 22:09:00 +0000

A trip east on Hearst, from Oxford to Euclid. A trip I took many times myself when I lived up in the Berkeley Hills. The scuffle at about the 2:00 mark is particularly choice.

Adventures in Dogwalking

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:31:00 +0000

The Path Less Shoveled
Originally uploaded by leespeaks.

The length of unshoveled sidewalk between us had been tromped into single-file trench. The other guy and his dog stood at the other end waving for Gordy and me to come on through. Back at my end of the trough, I was thinking about crossing the street, but Kenmore was looking pretty slushy and full of melty chemicals that are unfriendly to dog feet. So I took the other guy's offer.

Gordy is in most respects an upstanding animal, but he does tend to lose his cool around other dogs, complete with the apeshit yapping and even the occasional throat lunge. We used to have a big dog, three times Gordy's size, who thought this was a blast. Most people and dogs you meet out on the street are not so understanding.

So halfway through the trench, I scooped Gordy up and prepared my usual explanation: "This one's a troublemaker," or words to that effect. As we passed, the other guy's dog rose up tentatively on its hind legs for a polite sniff, and I said something like, "Well, aren't you a cutie," because it was indeed a cute dog, a tawny mid-sized whippet-pinscher mix. I was about to turn and say thanks to the other guy when he erupted.

"You're not even gonna say thank you? What an ASSHOLE!"

With that, he stomped off down the little snow ditch, yanking the whippet-pinscher mix behind him. The next words from me were the thanks he was apparently so in need of, but his reply was to yell, "Fuck you, man!"

Like the first thing he said, this came out sounding so wounded and plaintive and out of proportion that I was trying not to laugh when I called out another thanks and added a wish for a good evening. Still clomping away, the other guy hollered back another F bomb, adding his hope that Gordy would someday get hit by a car. I called back another wish for a good evening and closed with a "God bless!" that I'll admit strayed into Jerry Lewis territory.

As Gordy and I went on up the street, I tried but failed to maintain any sense of offense as the whole business quickly transmuted into satire. Sure, my mind churned out the usual sarcastic things that tend to come to you after such an encounter, but it was also turning every "fuck" the other guy said into "flurg," making it even more difficult not to laugh, because to me, "Flurg you, man!" is pretty fucking funny.

Of course, I still feel sorry for the other guy's dog.

State Capitols

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 21:49:00 +0000

The day after my hope for America came off life support, C and I jumped in the car and drove more than a thousand miles through five states. This took several days and passed through two state capitals (Indianapolis, IN and Frankfort, KY). If we'd had a little more time and stamina, we could have made it to Columbia, SC, but oh well. A couple weeks later we hopped in the same car and drove to my dad's house in South Dakota for an early Thanksgiving. We plotted the trip so as to pass through two more state capitals (Madison, WI and Des Moines, IA). In all four capitals, we stopped to have a look at each state's capitol building. The slide show above is for your viewing pleasure, should you really care.

I mention this as a way of letting you know that I have a nerdy and indefensible goal of seeing all 50 state capitol buildings. This flurry of activity in November allowed me to check of numbers 20, 21 and 22 (I'd already visited Frankfort in 1998, but C had never been there and the building is limestone remarkable).

Here are the simple rules of this geeky quest:

Driving through a state's capital city doesn't count. Physical proximity to the building itself is required. If it's closed for any reason (after hours, holiday, fumigation, etc.), I still get credit.
You can't make a special trip just to see the capitol building.

I have a corollary goal of visiting all 50 states (current total 34), but I figure focusing on the capital buildings will take care of that.

Subway ride 1905

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:48:00 +0000

Beneath the streets of New York, going from 14th Street to 42nd. You'll feel like you're in a century-old tunnel for a while, but the payoff arrives just past 5:05.

Can I get an amen?

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:09:00 +0000

Overheard in Chicago: A man on his cell phone in a cafe.

"So you think that your praying got me fired? Well... that's a god I want no part of."

The Annual Leaf Movie

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:09:00 +0000

Captured last week in Kentucky and North Carolina.

A last taste of summer

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:54:00 +0000

That's right, another post about watermelon.

Going the extra mile, radio style

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:23:00 +0000

In my radio days, I've managed to keep my on-air composure while other people were making faces, mooning me, talking about lingerie and a host of other distractions. But my hat is off to the Greek dude in the video above. Still waiting for a translation of the parting remarks.

Via

Man on the Street

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:30:00 +0000

Try as you may, there's no way to escape it. Believe me, I've tried. But last Friday morning the endlessly hollow coverage of the longest presidential campaign in human history caught up with me while I was walking the dog.

As we strolled past the entrance to Loyola's North Shore campus a reporter from the Chicago Fox affiliate called me over. I'm an involuntarily polite Midwesterner, so I stopped.

And since she is a television reporter in a major market, her hair and makeup were flawless, which meant that she'd probably been up for hours at that point. Her camera operator, as so often happens in television, was scraggly and could have passed for homeless, although he too had probably been up untangling cables and checking batteries for hours. At this point, I'd been awake all of 20 minutes and had only spoken briefly to the dog, who for all his good points isn't much of conversationalist.

The ravishing reporter asked if I had watched John McCain's acceptance speech the night before and I told her no, but that I'd heard some of the news coverage. That was good enough for her. Would I mind talking about it on camera? Uh, I guess so. Ravishing and Scruffy leaned in, she with her microphone and him with his camera, and posed a question, something along the lines of "What did you think of the Republican convention?"

Gore Vidal once famously quipped that a person should never turn down an opportunity to have sex or be on television, but this was back in the days before HIV, AIDS, CNN, MSNBC and other dire acronyms. And of course it also assumes that you're able to organize your thoughts into a coherent arrangement of subjects and verbs and predicates, which Vidal always seems able to do. Problem is that even on a good day I'm no Gore Vidal, but especially not at 6:45 AM, unshowered, uncaffeinated, and holding a bag of dogshit.

Up until the question was asked, time seemed to be clicking along more or less at its usual pace. But as a random assortment of words began to make their way out of my mouth, my voice took on the quality of Charlie Brown's teacher. I rattled on for what seemed an eternity, but what a stopwatch would have clocked at a minute, tops. Unfortunately, it was all rattle, baby, and no hum and made about as much sense as the preceding simile. The term farrago comes to mind. In the middle of my blather a bus roared past. The dog tugged politely at the end of the leash.

Having been on the other side of the microphone I could tell that Ravishing and Scruffy were already mentally moving on to the next person on the street, next vox of the populi, hoping for something they could actually use. And I can't blame them one bit.

I kept thinking about it as the dog and I made our way home. After a couple blocks, I had a finally come up with a pithy statement: "I miss the old McCain." You know the one, the actual maverick, not the Stepford/podperson McCain I've been hearing for months now.

As so often happens these days, the fake news folks have the truest take on this.

I don't know that I would have voted for the pre-2006 McCain although it's certainly possible. That guy at least had a soul. And for what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Well, Jesus, just ask Dick Cheney.

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See also: My friend Fred has an astute point and cinematic comparison to make about the Palin nomination.

Quotating

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:38:00 +0000

"I sometimes feel as if I would like to scream out to the American public that they are squirting gasoline on the fire. The prison system is now manufacturing offenders, it is increasing the amount of transgression, it is multiplying crimes, it is compounding evil."

Psychiatrist Karl Menninger, from testimony before Congress in 1971.

Seedy

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:37:00 +0000

You can call it summer if you want. I call it watermelon season.

And this year, add seedless watermelon to the long list of Innovations I Have Initially Denounced (online banking, pay-at-the-pump, caller ID, etc.) and Later Wholeheartedly Embraced.

Last weekend I was buying groceries and noticed that the seeded watermelon was 10 cents a pound cheaper. Having now made it through the first quarter of my enormous seedy friend, I'm selling out again.

Seeded watermelon is fine if you're sitting on my dad's porch in South Dakota and spitting the seeds into the bushes. Not so nice in the new third-floor condo, where the seeds require you to transform blameless household articles into spittoons or hover over an open trashcan. So after this ten-pounder is gone, it's back to The Island of Dr Moreau.

Seen from the El

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:15:00 +0000

One of the many advantages of our recent move from Oak Park to the Edgewater neighborhood in Chicago proper has been the accompanying switch from the Blue Line to the Red Line for the bulk of my public transportation. The Blue Line runs along the Eisenhower Expressway before going underground as you hit downtown and the Loop. The result is you have a view of cars racing (or often inching) along on the surrounding lanes. It's like riding in a ditch.

Much of the Red Line is truly elevated, allowing for some treetop views and world-class eavesdropping on lives near the tracks. But near the Fullerton stop, as you're passing through DePaul University's Lincoln Park campus, you might get the feeling that someone is looking back at you...

That's Frances X McCabe Hall which (literally) overlooks DePaul's Wish Field and Cacciatore Stadium, and nosy subway riders.

www.transitchicago.com/

The Good Wordle

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:42:00 +0000

Here's a cool time waster: Wordle. I used it to create this here word cloud for Oddment of Sandwiches.

And now back to your regularly scheduled life, already in progress.

(Tip from Good Evening)

What Though The Way May Be Long

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:51:00 +0000

This delightfully odd little film, set to the song "What Though The Way May Be Long" by Sweden's Esbjorn Svensson Trio, shows how much can be done with very little, on a number of levels. Today it takes on an additional melancholy layer of meaning with the news that pianist Esbjorn Svensson died over the weekend.

More over at The New Low Down.

Who's Watching

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:21:00 +0000

Here's an update on activity in my other blogs.

The New Low Down

KISS and Condoleeza Rice

An Oddment of Sandwiches
This purposely un-bloggy thing has turned into a story collector, of all things, thanks to a writing exercise I came up with back in November. I take the Word of the Day from two word-of-the-day services and try to sketch out a scene that makes use of both words, for example "garboil" and "lacuna". One time what came out was a poem. I try to keep this to a single page in a 7x5 notebook, so most of them come out pretty short. Initially, I tried to use both words in the story which was fine at first, but quickly began to feel forced.

It's been a profitable exercise, artistically speaking, although being in control of all these characters can be a burden. Bumping off a talking penguin is one thing, but with one poor sap I needed two edits to make sure he was dead.

So we'll see where this goes. Most of the pieces I've sketched are still in the notebook, where they will remain. No use crying over spilled ink. But there are several characters who keep turning up asking me for fresh scenes. I get the feeling that two of them are going bound to meet sometime.

Preposition trouble

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:47:00 +0000

A little something for the Word Dorks from this morning's Chicago Tribune Daywatch:
So many questions: Is the governor's desk on wheels now? Can he raise and lower it like a bus? Are free rides the only way to get the disabled off his desk? What are they doing up there to begin with?

(And yes, the title of this post is a reference to this classic cartoon. Money line at ~3:06)

Reunited

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:09:00 +0000

Sometimes it's the little things.

We just spent six months camping out in a rented place in Oak Park. It was less than half the size of our place in Kansas City but had a full basement. The idea was to put most of our stuff down there and unpack minimally so as not to get too comfortable there while we learned our way around Chicago. The plan worked, almost too well. (I'd forgotten how much I hate camping.)

So now, more than six months after packing them, most of the boxes are coming open and it's like Christmas everyday. Pictured above is some of the beloved crap that will once again clutter my workspace:

A rubber Snoopy, prone (acquired in grade school)
A Mr Creosote action figure (when you squeeze him a green goo protrudes from his mouth)
A weird ceramic kangaroo caddy that used to sit in my dad's office
A rubber chicken Tootsie Pop holder (still, for some reason, in its original packaging)
An Abe Lincoln beanie doll, purchased at Mount Rushmore
And behind them a yard stick from Jay Egge's service shop on East Highway 38 in Sioux Falls (now the site of a Wal-Mart, I believe).

I also moved some dumb stuff...

So long, Spindle

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Tue, 06 May 2008 17:08:00 +0000

I've seen Stonehenge and the Eiffel Tower. I've been to the top of the Empire State Building and I used to spend part of every summer near Mount Rushmore. Now I'd never suggest that "Spindle" (a.k.a., The Car Kabob) in Berwyn, Illinois, was on a par with any of these monumental structures, but I will confess to feeling a thrill when I discovered we were living a short hop away in Oak Park.

I'll also confess that I owe much of that thrill to Spindle's appearance in Wayne's World. Not a great film but WW did rise above its SNL spin-off cohort thanks to the ridiculous, pneumatic optimism of Mike Meyers' character and to some fine second unit photography of Spindle and other bits of suburban Americana. The two reverberated against each other, elevating the end result clear of the realm of cornball sketch mishagas. (The less said about Wayne's World 2, the better.)

When news of Spindle's demise surfaced last year, a local group tried to save it. They raised donations but not enough. Last week, the mall owner tried to sell it on eBay but there were no bids. So last Friday night, Spindle came down. Instead, the Cermak Plaza shopping center will get a new Walgreens. Doesn't seem like much of a trade.

And now the Chicago Tribune reports that Spindle may return, somewhere, some day. We shall see. All I know is that I'm even more motivated than ever to see Carhenge - before it gets replaced by a Bass Pro Shop.

Tiny hamlet

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:15:00 +0000

One more post before I disappear into a pile of packing paper.

I haven't even been paying attention to the Pennsylvania primary coverage. Yet somehow the phrase "hardscrabble town in western Pennsylvania" has popped out of the media cloud enough in the past few days that I now have Bill Murray's rant from Groundhog Day running on a loop in my mind. I consider this a blessing, so I thought I'd share.

Once again the eyes of the world turn to this "tiny hamlet in western Pennsylvania," blah blah blah... There is no way this winter is ever going to end as long as that groundhog keeps seeing his shadow. I don't see any way out of it. He’s got to be stopped. And I have to stop him.

Not for nothing (as they say further east), but don't look for any relief come Wednesday. The Groundhog Day we're all in looks to last all summer. To quote Phil Connors, again, "You wanna throw up here, or you wanna throw up in the car?"

Here come the boxes

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:25:00 +0000

At long last, we're finally going to be moving into our new place next week. I'm psyched.

Of course with all the packing, shuffling and settling there's going to be even less time to blog. See you in a couple of weeks.

Suess speaks (sort of)

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:24:00 +0000

Stop Making Movies About My Books

On the fourteenth of March, in towns nationwide / In every cinema, multiplex, on every barnside / Gleamed another adapting of one of my books / CGI-ed and digitized by another sly crook...

I have a VHS copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Someday I'll get around to buying a digital copy from iTunes or something. But as for adaptations of books by the good Doctor, that's as far as I'm prepared to go. As such, I haven't seen any of the bloated big screen adaptations to come out since Theodor Seuss Geisel was translated to a less corporeal format.

So with glee I recommend reading the Onion op-ed above.

"Why it's simply an outrage—a crime, you must judge!—
To crap on my books with this big-budget sludge.
My books are for children to learn ones and twos in,
Not commercialous slop for Jim Carrey to ruin."

Geisel's widow Audrey gets roughed up near the end, but else what's a First Amendment for? Besides, April is supposedly "the cruelest month" and National Poetry Month, to boot.

Then I recommend buying one of the actual books.

City folk

noreply@blogger.com (WLIB) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:20:00 +0000

I've heard it said that Chicago is like New York but with nicer people. Having lived in both places and approaching the six month mark of my Chicagoland residence, I'd say that in general the description fits. (There are assholes everywhere, after all, and, yes, I am talking about the pituitary case who manages that motel just off I-80 in Youngstown, Ohio).

As an illustration, take the image above, the snapping of which required me to stand in the middle of a busy sidewalk in the Loop and strike a number of modern dance poses. Most of the passersby gave me what felt like a polite berth and kept moving. In New York (by which I mean Manhattan), I would have expected to get an aggrieved berth accompanied by an annoyed grunt or possibly a remark.

I loved living in New York, but I always suspected that people occasionally stepped in front of cabs so they could let loose with a Ratzo Rizzo "I'm walkin' here!" My own crackpot theory about this is that there's something about the crush of humanity on the island combined with the awareness that so many people want your space (despite the fact that their space is probably so much better than yours ever will be) that results in a kind of neurotic territoriality.

One time I took a date to a movie on the Upper West Side. The place wasn't even a quarter full when my companion and I arrived and we were standing near the back trying to decide how close to the screen to sit when a woman in her 60s approached us and barked, "Excuse me!" I moved aside so she could enter the empty row I had been unintentionally blocking. We watched her shuffle along that empty row (one of at least a dozen on that side of the theater) until she got to the center aisle, which she then followed to the treasured and magical seat down front, the one she had earned by asserting hierarchy over me and my date. We shrugged. The movie looked fine from where we sat.