Chicago: The Eponymous Thread

-- Laurel (sininspac...), February 12th, 2007. (Laurel) (later) (link)

This is an awesome xpost.

It does that every year, though. Chicago winter is a rude guest indeed.

On Saturday I went over to M4ddie's and experimented with tomato bisque recipes. Then yesterday I finally worked on music stuff all day, then put on pants around 10 pm to have some beers with a friend who's in town. That's how Sunday is done, yo.

When people say that babies OMG look like one of their parents or like someone else (heh), I can almost never see it. They just look like babies.

I want to hear NY Groove real bad now.

And I agree - I am much more content with warm slush than the freezingness, at least for now. And while winter is getting old, I would rather all this winter than a similar amount of summer.

What really weirds me out are little babies who look like tiny adults.

xpost OMG LITTLE MAN!!!!

but you'll have to ask tep if that's what i really think.

do you ever see kids and know what they'll look like when they're like 40 or 20 or 80 or whatever? cause sometimes i think i do.

vs.

http://moldovacc.md/cumulus/White%20Chicks.jpg

Yeah, sometimes. Or I'll look at friends and think I can see them when they are in their 60s.

A great film...period. Lon Chaney heads a group of three thieves/carnival performers as they masquerade as an old woman, a man, and a baby in a pet shop where they sell birds that talk only by ventriloquism. Once the owners get home they see the birds no longer talk and the thieves are invited into their opulent homes. Tod Browning, the director of Dracula, does a marvelous job with this film. There are scenes that are just fantastic, the best of which for me is the courtroom scene. Browning gets a lot of help, however, by some real good performances. Chaney turns in a complex performance of a ventriloquist in love, yet evil, yet with some slight conscience. The scene in the courtroom where he deliberates helping Hector is acting at its best. Throw in a great job by Mae Busch and little Harry Earles as a cigar-smoking midget disguised as a baby. The silent film is a lost art only in that we no longer view it, talk about it, review it like it should. This film and the performances within should be seen not heard.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/176/387154598_7ed00c69bb.jpg?v=0

It was the central idea of a 1954 Bugs Bunny cartoon called ''Baby Buggy Bunny,'' directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese. Remember the burly, barrel-chested ex-con Finster, shaving and smoking a cigar while hiding out in Bugs' rabbit hole till Bugs got hip? Some online posters have cried plagiarism, but before you go yelling at Little Man director Keenen Ivory Wayans and his younger-brother cowriters Marlon and Shawn, remember, they freely cop to cribbing the idea. Plus, this concept was a golden oldie way before the Bugs Bunny version. It goes back at least to the 1925 Tod Browning silent movie The Unholy Three, wherein a children-hating little man poses as a baby to steal from the wealthy. (The film got remade in sound in 1930). The same conceit also shows up in a 1939 Little Rascals short called ''Tiny Troubles,'' in which a cowlicked, squeaky-voiced Alfalfa trades in his crying little brother for another infant who turns out to be a little man up to no good.

Didn't I mention the Little Rascals short the other night?

This is sort of weird, though, because each season is by definition three months. I expect it to be cold/snowy from the beginning of December to the end of February. Why should February be exempt?

What gets me, though, is when it's still cold in mid-to-late March. I think it snowed on my birthday once.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/142/388111424_069f02b56b.jpg?v=0

snow in october this year: weird. 40's for most of january: weird. the weather right now: typical, i'd guess. and will still be typical at the end of march.

"discover your pizzanality"

I ordered The Hipster by name and it didn't feel good to do so.

Courtney and I ate there. Her opinion was that it was actually the worst pizza she'd ever eaten.

It was bad enough that we went and ate a second lunch at Noodles & Co., which has yet to let anyone down.

what do you guys think about this dramatic caveman illustration?

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7018/6588560541_beec6eaf7b.jpg

(it's from a book about ancient humans)

i think i want that book about ancient humans

i've always really loved the artwork in this book and i finally got around to scanning it
this is one of my favorite images
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7173/6588562073_750453f586.jpg

this is the cover
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7158/6588603327_918a4974e2.jpg

is all of the text on that burnt sienna background? that's awesome, if so. very primordial.

yep. it's all red, white, and black. for an otherwise purely informative series nonfiction book about cavepeople, it's remarkably arty!

marek, our protagonist caveman, is wearing a bear pelt/corpse in that illustration btw

Very nice.

I'm on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

I'm on the Brown line.

writing a dress code policy woo-hoo

10 minutes left until we close woo-hoo

Make it so everyone must wear a clever hat on Tuesdays.

"Socks must match, except on alternating Thursdays, when socks are prohibited."

T-shirts strictly forbidden, unless they bear the logo of 1) the library or 2) Big Johnson.

It would be wonderful to make the policy extremely convoluted and absurd. Though I guess technically it's not a policy but a clarification of a policy.

loljenny

things i need to do, but cannot manage to do so far yet today:

-- laundry
-- produce market shopping
-- washing the dog
-- changing out of my head-to-toe green loungewear outfit
-- going outside
-- combing my hair

I did manage to take a shower and eat lunch.

i look like a tired snowpea.

I haven't combed my hair today either. Or gone outside or done laundry but tbf I didn't have very high aspirations today re: activity.

Fixing to make a roast chicken, sweet potatoes, and collards, though.

Yo, real ilx is back.

It's not loading.

never mind, it finally loaded.