Mystery Flavours Revealed!
Hundreds of thousands of guesses have been submitted by the nation and three lucky winners have won £50,000.
Congratulations to Helen of Warwick, Nikki of Nottingham, and Emma of London!
Offer: Dried hops flowers
Posted to Dubuque Freecycle list:
Offer: Dried hops flowers. For beer or pillows.
RIP Robin Gibb (1949-2012)
Petaluma Chicken Promotional Film (1932)
Promotional film for Sonoma County poultry industry. Featuring young women making an extremely large omelet.
“Gee, I bet yours tastes the best!”
RIP Richard Harding, Owner of Chicago’s Quiet Knight . . .
. . . and before that, Poor Richard’s.
Good stuff in this Sun-Times obit on the Chicago scene, mid-sixties through seventies:
Los Angeles had the Troubador. Chicago had the Quiet Knight.
Personal note: In July 1978, after seeing the Stones at Soldier Field, the ex and I were walking down Belmont Avenue, right past the Quiet Knight, en route to our friend Mark’s apartment. Mark lived in a garret atop Schuba’s (still going strong at Belmont and Southport).
And that, children, was the night the Stones, along with Willie Dixon, paid a visit to the Quiet Knight and jammed with Muddy Waters. The night we walked on by, oblivious, and missed it.
Cooper Renner: “Ack-Ack”
Speaking, as we were, of recognition, Cooper Renner’s story “Ack-Ack” (in JMWW, Summer 2011) has been included in the Wigleaf Top 50 list of best stories of 2011.
from the archives: March 18, 2009
35 k followers. Just sayin’.
Sally Cruikshank: “Make Me Psychic” (1978)
What got me started was the discovery that animation artist Sally Cruikshank has an Etsy shop where she’s selling watercolors.
Cruikshank is probably best known for Quasi at the Quackadero (1975), which is now listed on the United States National Film Registry. Or you may have seen the animated sequences she contributed to Sesame Street in the nineties.
My favorite, though, has always been Make Me Psychic. “Which way to the we-fwesh-ments?”
(Many of Cruikshank’s films are available for viewing on her YouTube channel, laughingsal, as well as on a DVD you can buy from her Etsy shop.)
from the archives: June 29, 2006
Radiographer (Perry Blake Now Owes Me $156):
My final was yesterday, orientation for the next semester is tomorrow, and today, with no plans, I sat around and was bored, that is, until I read a review of the Adam Sandler film “Click”. Memories started flooding me from my old life in Hollywood. I had to see the film because there were a few things I had to know.
dear clusterflock
After a conversation with a dear long-time friend who is descending into the murk of what they call dementia, I’m dazed and confused. One of many cruel details: My fading friend introduced me to the works of Iris Murdoch when I was seventeen or so.
I’m all tore up. Listening to Sandy Denny singing By the Time It Gets Dark and snuffling. But trying to smack some sense into my sorry self-pitying self.
Seeking resources above and beyond the obvious. Most especially, looking for help for LGBT couples and for alternatives to traditional nursing home settings. Where? In or near Dallas, Texas. When? Now.
Grateful for whatever thoughts you may share here on clusterflock or via our contact form.
smoke signals
@deronbauman Fort Spunky.
— Sheila Ryan (@Cirinda) May 5, 2012
@deronbauman Fort Spanky. Fort Stinky. Fort Punky. Fort Skanky. Fort Rinky-Dink. Fort Honky. Fort Monkey Butt. Fort Yankee. Fort Wonky.
— Sheila Ryan (@Cirinda) May 5, 2012
@deronbauman Fort Sphincter. Fort Laughter. Fort Spinster. Fort Munster. Fort Muenster. Fort Mustard. Fort Bustard. Fort Custard.
— Sheila Ryan (@Cirinda) May 5, 2012
Sugar Street Art
Montreal artist Shelley Miller puts up these pieces of sugar street art that are incredibly detailed. From afar, it resembles the blue and white finesse of Delft ceramic ware, but in reality all of these outdoor murals are made entirely out of frosting and sugar.
Verbatim
“You didn’t get yourself completely blasted last night, which helped.”
Silence.
“One little more bite of lasagna, and it’s all gonna be gone.”
Silence.
“That was good lasagna, and it came with a salad.”
Silence.
“Are you gonna be awake enough to get home?”
Death in the sky
Kate, who’s married to Mark, 35, wants to warn other owners of small dogs about the “death in the sky” threat.
Red kites. Snatching up Pomeranians, sausages — even fully-grown male mallard ducks.
It’s an ignorant and forgetful generation. I’ll wager Kate’s granny could tell her about death from the sky.
Nutella is not a health food
Maker of Nutella settles with consumers over ‘healthy food’ claims; will pay out $3 million.
Nutella is the stuff with the hazelnuts. Hazelnuts have lots of the good kind of cholesterol.
No one has ever gone into anaphylactic shock from eating hazelnuts.
Chocolate + hazelnuts kick free radicals’ asses.
dismissive phrase of the day (twitter version)
Was looking for a simple weather iPad app. Ended up with Aelios which is just a ridiculous steampunk nonsensecake. twitter.com/peteashton/sta…
— Pete Ashton (@peteashton) April 27, 2012
I’m stealing “ridiculous steampunk nonsensecake,” and I encourage you to do so as well.
The Chicago Food Truck Saga Gets Legal
Chicago is the only big city that does not permit food truckers to cook on their trucks.
Long story short, in the battle of truck verses brick, a small group of those with a special interest are doing the best they can to fight the natural order of competition, free economy, and consumer demand by wrapping it up in veil of public health and safety. I understand the other side, and the other side has been my livelihood for the better half of my adult life, but at the end of the day it’s classic Chicago politics, and we are simply not comparing apples to oranges. As everyone on the panel agreed, there’s enough room in this city for both to coexist, and we have to wonder how long Chicago can sit on this fence when the rest of the country has jumped on board. I mean, when coverage of the city’s backward policies make the Wall Street Journal, ludicrous is right.
Sea creatures
Perfectly preserved specimens from an epoch when the Driftless Region was the bed of a vast sea.
Stuff Smith: You’se A Viper
For your pleasure on this Weed Day, 2012. Stuff Smith: You’se a Viper.
WANTED . . . GLASS!
Posted to Dubuque Freecycle list:
I am looking for all kinds of various glass you may have to get rid of! It can be anything like old dishes, vases, candle holders, mirrors, jars, wine bottles, etc! I am not picky . . . although I would LOVE anything colored!! However I will take clear too! THANKS!
R.I.P. Levon Helm
“The music starts around eight o’clock, and it’s over when it’s over,” he said of the Midnight Rambles at his home in Woodstock, New York.
I’ve been meditating on Levon Helm since his daughter’s recent announcement that the end was near. Wondering why I felt so torn up over his impending demise.
Now he has passed over, and I’m still working on it.
Eat and run, please!
Brisk modern style, in the form of cubist decor and streamlined furniture, provided assistance in the late 1920s and 1930s [to restaurant owners seeking quick customer turnover]. Artist and industrial designer John Vassos, who illustrated the book Phobia, felt he understood psychology well and successfully applied it in his 1931 design of NYC’s Rismont Tea Room, where the tables were a bit too small and chair seats were triangular. “The chairs are comfortable — if one doesn’t sit too long on them,” he wrote. [See photo.]
Uncomfortable chairs would become known in the restaurant industry as “15-minute chairs.” Charles Eames’ fiberglass scoop chair might be an example, offering little possibility of posture realignment.
The American badger,
it would seem, is less settled in its ways than the English badger. I have it on good authority that English badgers inhabit burrows for generations. But your American badger is a restless soul, moving from burrow to burrow in a ceaseless search for . . . something.
My friend Charlie thinks he may have spied a badger hole near the vegetable garden. I am hoping that the badger remains in residence for a short time at least and that it may be possible to lure him out of his burrow with a tasty tidbit. Honestly, the only badger I believe I have ever seen was a cantankerous creature who lived in Madison’s Henry Vilas Zoo, and I would love to see one again.
Badgers have bad reps in some circles, but I am not afraid. My only concern arises from this alarming assertion:
The American badger is classified as a carnivore, although they have been known to feed on cultivated garden plants, such as green beans.
Not on the turkey craw beans Charlie ordered at my request, it better not!
Ron Finley: Food Forest
After four months in Argentina and places proximate, my friend Charlie is back in the Driftless Region.
He will be tending his garden and selling his produce again this year — and he ordered turkey craw beans especially for me!
Via Charlie, three minutes of uplift featuring a man who tends a garden in south LA.
“I like to live on the edge so I plant mint where you’re not supposed to.”
Shanghai Food Shop Incorporated
Nineteen varieties of chop suey — plus liver and onions and American cheese sandwiches at the Shanghai Food Shop (1938).
From the NYPL Menu Collection.
