Farewell, Army & Lou’s
Shifting residential patterns and a tough economy forced the closing last Sunday of Army & Lou’s, a Chicago restaurant that opened its doors in 1945. For 65 years (at a couple of South Side locations) it was frequented by Chicago families and by celebrities and was the favored restaurant of Mayor Harold Washington.
Supporters are rallying to help the restaurant reopen, but I fear the support may be too little and that it will be proven to have come too late.
tweet of the day
The Big Lebowski 2
“I have a movie coming out called The Fields. I have another one coming out that I produced with my brother called The Irishman. And we’ll be doing American Pie 4 this year and Big Lebowski 2 this year.”
Tara Reid on her upcoming movie schedule.
fyi
I’m @deronbauman.
Who should I be following?
Amy said
Speaking of snowpocalypse, I had a case of snow-poc-a-lips earlier. They were chapped.
from the comments
A friend’s relative is James Harrison’s baby mama. He likes to eat Fruit Loops and watch cartoons in his off time. “I would too if I was James Harrison,” said Mr. Boudreaux, the high school newspaper sports editor.
This has been a micro-sidebar in coverage of the big game.
the photograph is pure gold
From Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera Since 1870 by Leonard McCombe (via)
“[Eyes right is executed with almost military precision by dining car males aboard New York bound 20th Century Limited as Kim Novak eases into a seat]“
headline of the day, III
Vatican says Benedict no longer an organ donor
Happy! Happy! Happy! Happy!
headline of the day, II
Sarah Palin files paperwork to trademark her name
dear clusterflock
Super Bowl plans.
Texans trying to pronounce WI city names
For Cindy and Sheila
headline of the day
(via @indiamos)
Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps
Some thoughts on the technical implications of Apple and Murdoch’s The Daily:
What makes me sweat — I can’t think about it too much, because I’ve already spent the last couple years trying not to think about it too much — is what the whole thing looks like under-the-hood. How do you specify the different content and interactions and layouts? You can’t just take snapshots from InDesign and push them out: you need something almost like a Hypercard stack (Hyperpad?) that says what should happen when you tap here and rotate and swipe and so on. They had to create an entire platform for this.
And that’s no small achievement. I’ve spent years thinking about it, dreaming about it, fantasizing about it — which is probably only enough to have a small notion of the difficulties involved and no real concept of what it really takes to create a platform and production system like this.
I would not at all be surprised if a product appears out of this, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it makes a ton of money.
word of the day
(Greek: “recognition”), in a literary work, the startling discovery that produces a change from ignorance to knowledge. It is discussed by Aristotle in the Poetics as an essential part of the plot of a tragedy, although anagnorisis occurs in comedy, epic, and, at a later date, the novel as well. Anagnorisis usually involves revelation of the true identity of persons previously unknown, as when a father recognizes a stranger as his son, or vice versa. One of the finest occurs in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex when a messenger reveals to Oedipus his true birth, and Oedipus recognizes his wife Jocasta as his mother, the man he slew at the crossroads as his father, and himself as the unnatural sinner who brought misfortune on Thebes. This recognition is the more artistically satisfying because it is accompanied by a peripeteia (“reversal”), the shift in fortune from good to bad that moves on to the tragic catastrophe. An anagnorisis is not always accompanied by a peripeteia, as in the Odyssey, when Alcinous, ruler of Phaeacia, has his minstrel entertain a shipwrecked stranger with songs of the Trojan War, and the stranger begins to weep and reveals himself as none other than Odysseus. Aristotle discusses several kinds of anagnorisis employed by dramatists. The simplest kind, used, as he says, “from poverty of wit,” is recognition by scars, birthmarks, or tokens. More interesting are those that arise naturally from incidents of the plot.
PHDs Awarded to Women in 2009
Following up on a conversation with a friend in Philosophy, I took a quick look at the Survey of Earned Doctorates to see the breakdown by gender for Ph.Ds awarded in the United States in 2009.
(via @mattyglasias)
from the comments
Ronald Reagan actually seems to have believed that he had experienced and performed acts of military courage that he merely acted for a camera. Clearly, the experience of seeing the rushes was more compelling to him than his own experience of playing those parts. You can laugh at him. But he was elected, and became the President that made the american empire possible, by showing how to think in terms of radical simplifications that the moving image supplies. In retrospect, shows like the Waltons or Happy Days seem to have had the sole purpose of propagating explicitly Reaganite social ideas. In the same way, Star Trek is the Triumph of the Will of Ladybird Johnson’s Great Society. Eight years of John-Boy’s homilies made many people believe that people once really talked that way, just in time to cast their first ballot for The Great Communicator.
OFFER: Large Stuffed Holiday Turkey/Moose
Posted to Williamson County (Illinois) Freecycle list:
Have large stuffed Christmas Moose and stuffed Thanksgiving Turkey.
Size: Large enough to sit comfortably (together) in a chair. Originally purchased at Cracker Barrel. Like new condition. Tired of storing them every year.
Must be willing to drive to Johnston City, Illinois.
tweet of the day
The Aftermath
Lake Shore Drive. Chicago Blizzard of 2011.
The Problem with Mad Men
An articulate position that jives with my instincts:
[T]he problem with Mad Men is that it suffers from a hypocrisy of its own. As the camera glides over Joan’s gigantic bust and hourglass hips, as it languorously follows the swirls of cigarette smoke toward the ceiling, as the clinking of ice in the glass of someone’s midday Canadian Club is lovingly enhanced, you can’t help thinking that the creators of this show are indulging in a kind of dramatic having your cake and eating it, too: even as it invites us to be shocked by what it’s showing us (a scene people love to talk about is one in which a hugely pregnant Betty lights up a cigarette in a car), it keeps eroticizing what it’s showing us, too. For a drama (or book, or whatever) to invite an audience to feel superior to a less enlightened era even as it teases the regressive urges behind the behaviors associated with that era strikes me as the worst possible offense that can be committed in a creative work set in the past: it’s simultaneously contemptuous and pandering. Here, it cripples the show’s ability to tell us anything of real substance about the world it depicts.
(via Schenkenburg)
Ice Ice Baby
We all love meteorological one-upmanship, don’t we? I know I do. “Okay, y’all are colder than us, but we’ve got more snow. And more wind!” Or: “This week is nothing to January 1999.” “1999? That was a pussy storm. I was in Chicago in 1967!”
So I love acting all smug when my Texas friends speak of harsh winter weather. But in truth I know that winter in north central Texas is not all that balmy and that when a storm hits, it ain’t pretty.
Read more
Eilert Pilarm, Jailhouse Rock
no description available
(thanks, Aaron)
from the moderated comments
Speaking of teddy bears, Prince Charles, the man, admitted to still sleeping with his teddy bear very very close to His Highness, no pun intended. How very sweet and loveley is that too Matt?
Quote out of Context
The latest spot to be rejected by Fox broadcasting was done so for “advancing particular beliefs or practices,” which is against company policy.
