new spice girls, flip flop mayhem, and other El Train Fun

To make the lemon cake, first combine the dry ingred..... dammit.
I grabbed the wrong printout from the counter.
should have turned a light on.
hold a mo'.

Ok.

Being the un-hip, out of touch guy that I am, I had no idea what was going on downtown last friday evening, that resulted in so many extra folks iding the El train, carrying blankets, back packs, etc.

Yes, they were carrying etc.

I was listening to my mp3 player on the unusually crowded El train, when five young women got on together.
(young women = 16-20 years old. Not like I asked for ID....)

It was if the Spice Girls had reformed.

We had trampy spice; Sorority Spice; Sporty-in-a-vaguely-mannish Spice;and two girls in carefully beat up jeans and tight, long sleeve flannel shirts, who I can only label as "Retro K-mart imitgation Grunge Spice(s)". Or, maybe "Alternative Lifestyle Spice(s)" though they were thoroughly feminine otherwise.

Each one was so distinguishable from the others that it was cartoonish, and I cannot for a moment think that it was all just a coincidence of fashion choices.

At the same time, I wish the had REALLY committed, and decided to go full-on Village People, cuz that would have been cool.

Trampy Spice was sporting a tight, leopard skin mini-dress over tights, lots of cleavage, lots of loud jewelry and ridiculous heels; and she'd almost fall over every time the train would come into, and again when it would, a station. After three or four station stops, she decided that maybe she should hold on.

Somehow, she screwed that up, too, and a couple of stops latger decided that maybe if she sat down, it would be better...

As I sat there listening to Social Distortion, I watched them make fun of a little punkette who had already been on the train when they boarded. She was worthy of their scorn, apparently, because she had a couple of piercings in her lip, and had shaved off her eyebrows and drew on longer ones.
Really long ones.

Yep, the spice girls were quietly mocking someone ELSE'S sense of fashion, without irony. They had tgheir backs to her, and she wans't paying attention, so I hope she didn't realize what they were doing.
"I don't care what they think, I'm punk."
If you really didn't care, you wouldn't try so hard...
Been there, done that, fooled noone.

As much fun as all of this was, it was time to disembark the train for my 15 minute walk through downtown to my commuter train station. the platform, hallways, and escalators wree packed with humanity. One such example of this humanity was a large, older woman, dressed shabbily and pulling a very full grocery cart behind her. She made a slow, shuffling bee-line through the teeming masses, toward an elevator.

The rest of us were stopping, shifting, etc to try to get around her. the cart was full of plastic bags and boxes, and random scraps of detrius, so that the whole visual effect was that she was unbalanced and homeless.

As we all ducked and dodged to get around her, I accidently stepped on a flip flop, worn by the guy in front of me, another El train amateur. I was still listening to music, but saw him stumble slightly, and then turn around to glare at me.

"Don't glare at me! I'm not the dumb ass who thought flip flops were a good idea for the El train" I thought, but did not voice, as I slid his shoe toward him with my foot, apologizing as I kept walking toward the exit.

I heard the homeless woman address the guy, as I walked away.
"That's why I always carry a few extra pair with me."
I guess that explains the grocery cart....
I busted out laughing upon hearing her say this, as That's Entertainmnet by The Jam began playing in my ears.

As I turned the corner, further distancing myself from the crowd, I realized that for her to have said that, the guy mustg have discovered that his flip flop had broke.
The thought that I was responsible for this guy having to go barefoot through downtown Chicago for his big advenure in the big city made me feel kinda bad, for a moment.

Until I came out onto the street, and was reminded that I was a block or so from Macy's, a three story Old Navy, and various other places where poorly-thought-out footwear options were readily available. He was gonna be just fine....

Saturday, July 11th, driving through SW MI countryside....

“Cousin’s House!!!!”

We’re working on it, p-nut.

“Cousin’s house!!!!”

Pretty soon, darlin’.

“Cousin’s House!”

“How many more times do you think she’ll say that before we get there?”
“More than ten.”

“Aunt Colleen’s house!!!!”

Well, at least there's some variety.

"Aunt Colleen's House!!!"

Yep.

“Go see Cousins!!!”

Yep.

“Excited!!!!”

We could kinda tell.

Silence.

Then….

“Cousin’s House!!!!”

She’s crazy.
Like that’s a bad thing….

“Go swimming!!!!”

If you want to.

“See John!!!!”

Yep, he’ll be there.

“Cousin’s House!!!!”


And we thought she’d nap all the way to the cottage last weekend…
At least she was happy, and she was cracking us up.

When she was younger, long-ish car rides did not bring out her best qualities…

"Go home now!" at 3am the next morning.... not quite as funny.

Eight (8) more days 'til the 4th of July...

“Eight more days ‘til the 4th of july….Eight more days ‘til I burn my house down”
-Ike Reilly, from the “We belong to the Staggering Evening” CD.

Ike (one of the best rock songwriters around, and a great live show), is from the Chicago area, which makes perfect sense, from a fireworks standpoint...

Read on.

Received an email from our village today, highlighting everything that’s going on in the next week or so.
At the end, in small type, the email reminds everyone that it’s illegal to use fireworks in our village (the whole state, actually), and to please leave fireworks displays to the professionals.

Perhaps if everyone did that, I would not pray for rain, every night between now and July 5th.

Yep, it’s illegal to possess and use fireworks in IL, so there’s a lucrative cottage industry of retail firework warehouses, juuuuuust over the border in Indiana.


The fireworks started in my neighborhood, two nights ago. Not the non-stop “do we live in Baghdad?” explosions that we’ll undoubtedly be experiencing by July 1, but….it’s started. And it won’t stop, as police do not make efforts to enforce the illegal nature of the fireworks, nor the late night noise violations.

By July 1, it’ll be steady from 7pm until past 11pm. As we get closer to the fourth, more and more folks will join in with their illegal fireworks. By the night of July 4th, we’ll sit out on our front stoop around dusk, and watch not only the official fireworks display, but no fewer than a dozen other unofficial (illegal) displays of varying quality and duration.
While listening to even more…

On July 5th, I'll find exploded pieces of fireworks on my roof; dogs all over the village will come out from under the beds where they’ve been cowering for a week, and the huge amount of trash left behind on sidewalks, railroad tracks and in neighborhood parks will start to sink slowly into the earth.

Yep, I’m a bit of a curmudgeon about them. In my crowded residential neighborhood, they seem to be really dangerous and disruptive idea, and one more excuse for folks to not give a flying fig about their neighbors. Also, growing up, noone had these kinds of fireworks, and going to a real display somewhere away from residential neighborhoods, was a very big deal.

There was one time, however, as an adult, that I really saw the appeal and fun of playing with colorful explosives.

Halloween in Ireland is a very big deal. It’s a bank holiday there, akin to the 4th of July or Memorial day here.

I happened to be on vacation there, one Halloween a few years ago, or I never would have known this. We were staying with some acquaintances in a little village in N. Central Ireland, pretty close to the n/s border.
The acquaintance, Rory, was known for his Halloween gathering. He was also known for his professional grade fireworks display.

The village was atop a hill, he lived on a nice chunk of land partway down the hill, which afforded anyone who wanted to watch, a great view. It also meant that he would be lighting them off nowhere near anyone else’s house or property.
Fireworks of the caliber that Rory had, were very illegal in that part of Ireland. But every year he’d buy ‘em someplace vaguely shady, and light ‘em off on Halloween, with what appeared to be ½ the village as cheering audience.

And every year, there would be a handful of kids posted by his gate, whose job it was to run and alert him if the Gardia was arriving. So of course, when he asked me if I wanted to help him with the show, I said “Sure, sounds awesome!”

I didn’t even pause when he handed me a beer and a blowtorch. Hey, when in Ireland…

So, we’d spark the torch, light off a couple of these massive roman candle-type thingies, and then run away, laughing, before they went off, to avoid lighting ourselves on fire.

About mid-way through, as I’m standing in a dark field, in rural Ireland, holding a blowtorch, I briefly pondered such things as how many laws I might have been breaking; what would happen if the Gardia DID show up; and how it might negatively impact my efforts to make my flight home, scheduled for the following afternoon. After a moment of this, I saw Rory heading back toward the launching area for more, so I pushed these negative thoughts out of my head, and trotted after him, blow torch in hand.

California Causes Cancer

So, I was shopping for a couple of fishing lures last night, at a nearby chain sporting good store. I was looking for one specific lure, to replace one that finally broke recently.
I was doing this last night, because I intend to fish on fathers’ day morning, killing time on a small MI lake while waiting for everyone else in the house to wake up.

After not finding it, and coming close to giving up, I finally found my ¼ oz frog patterned Hula Popper.
Huzzah!
And while riding that high, I looked around a bit more, and found a weedless soft bodied frog popper by a different manufacturer.
Why not?

So it went into the cart as well.

As I’m waiting, and waiting, and waiting……. At the check out aisle, I turn the 2nd lure over, to read the "how to fish this lure" info on the back. Instead, I get a sticker, stating that materials used in the making of this lure have been found to cause cancer in the state of California… Knowing that it was largely much ado about nothing, I still decided not to buy it.

This is certainly not the first time I’ve seen such a warning placed on some item or another’s packaging. Whatever the material is, it’s in lots of stuff. The cord that feeds from my PC to my MP3 player causes cancer in California. So does the cord that connects my digital camera to the PC.

So downloading music and photos can cause cancer.
But only in California.

Oddly enough, nowhere have I read labels indicating that these items cause cancer, say, in Ohio.
Or…. New Hampshire, as another example.

I think the logical correlation is being overlooked here.

If a result only occurs in one place, when same activity takes place EVERYWHERE, it’s not the activity, or the soft bodied frog popper, or the patch cord that causes the singular bad result. It’s the PLACE.

Therefore: California causes cancer.

This will add a startling new wrinkle to the "come to California" ad campaigns I’ve seen on TV…..

All joking aside, I can’t help but wonder about the labeling. What prompted it in the first place (cancer, apparently); why no other state has stepped forward and said "Hey, us too."; why the potentially harmful substance, if indeed it truly is, has not been removed from the items, or had attention drawn to it on a national level…..

We don’t demand (As other countries do) that our food products be labeled if they contain genetically modified organisms, and it was recently determined that we won't need to know if the meat we're buying is from a cloned animal; but someone pushed hard enough, somewhere, to make sure that I knew the fishing lure in my hand may cause cancer in one state…..

Chicago Gaelic Park Irish Fest 2009

Attended my... 9th? maybe 10th Gaelic Park Irish fest this past weekend.
Found it soon after moving to the area, when we spotted a flier in a window of a store near our house.

four days, three stages of live music, beer tents, many varied food booths, a tent full of retailers, and free midway rides.
All this for a not-unreasonable price of $15 per person, per day.

My god, how can you go wrong with THAT?

Well, you can host such an event while spending as little money as possible.
You can stop paying for bands once they start to get popular.
You can, by and large, only book acts that are eager to play Chicago for the first time, or who don't have much in the way of travel expenses, IE - local bands.

You can rent or buy the cheapest possible folding chairs, and then just keep using 'em year after year until they all break and/or someone gets hurt....

Like I did, last year, while holding my (At the time) 9-month old daughter.

"Ah, but you've gone back year after year, whiner. you're not telling the whole story."

Ok.

Back in the day...

...the beer was sold in small-ish plastic pitchers. $5 would buy you your own, say, quart of miller lite. A couple of those, and you're diggin' on the midway rides, and in a more receptive mood in relation to whatever music was put in front of you.
"This is the best band ever!!!! Let's go ride the Matterhorn again!"

...You'd have friends, local and more that would come into town, childless like you, and you'd do what a couple thousand other people did over the holiday weekend. turn it into a big party.

...Every town, village, and municipality in the midwest did not host their own irish festival, thus making it easier for the decent bands to get gigs elsewhere...
Combo of beer and lack of competition introduced me to a couple of my very favority bands to see live, Great Big Sea and The Clumsy Lovers. Also afforded us opportunities to see the Young Dubliners, Black 47, The Elders, the Fenians, and various other good bands that know how to combine rock and roll and traditional celtic music.

So we'd brave one extreme weather situation after another, one year flooding, another year freezing cold, the next year scorching hot, and we'd go. And if some years I had to engage the 4WD in my jeep, just to get out of the parking lot at the end of the day, that was just a cool, mud flinging bonus.

Now.....
...We have a child.
...Friends aren't coming into town for the party anymore. Many of them have kids, too. or the single ones have gotten married, and don't see the need for these kind of adventures anymore.
We've grown up, apparently.
Dammit.
...Beer's still $5, but comes in a 12 oz cup.
...Quality of music's gone way down hill. We used to have to pick the best day out of 4 good ones, now we search for the one that sounds like it has more promise than the others.
"Pictures of the bands playing on Monday are not all of a bunch of old people.... a couple of 'em have websites...."


And one of their cheap-ass, as-old-as-I-am plastic folding chairs DID collapse while I was sitting on it, last year. And not just cuz I'm large, there were larger folks sitting everywhere.
And I WAS holding my infant at the time.
I opened my eyes to find myself looking at the ceiling of the tent, laying in wet gravel, still holding my daughter, who didn't seem too traumatized by the experience. The fact that I instinctively held on to her, and she was not lying in a mute heap 10 feet away, injured, made me feel really good about my parenting skills, and my dedication to her well-being. I knew I loved her, and would do anything to keep her safe, but there it was, actual proof.

MY dad was standing there, staring at me with a horrified look.
"You ok?" said my retired fire-fighter dad, in full-on firefighter rescue guy mode.
"I don't know yet" I said quietly, still holding my child aloft by her armpits. I indicated the baby. He took her.
She smiled at him.
I slowly stood up, and realized I had drawn a crowd.
Also realized that nothing was broken, and that I had kicked over the stroller as I went down, sending beers flying.
One of the bystanders pointed to where I landed, and said "you're lucky."
I looked to where he was pointing.
There, literally an inch from where my skull landed, sticking up out of the ground, was a large, steel, tent stake. If I had landed one inch from where I did, I would have been dead, or paralyzed, or lucky to get off with just a minor skull fracture.
I eventually stopped shaking, and walked around a little bit to get away from the well-meaning crowd, while my dad held his unharmed granddaughter, who was by this time clapping along with the music.
I replaced the beers I had kicked across the tent. I fielded the "holy sh*t are you ok, what happened?" questions from my wife, and moved on.

And we were back there again this year. It was 60 and rainy, a forecast far worse than predicted, and bad enough to cause our friends to cancel, turning their car around en route and going back to their house.
The potentially not-crappy bands were... pretty crappy. And my daughter had no interest in the music at all this year, nor in spending any time in the tents.
Maybe if the bands were decent.....

We spent the afternoon shuffling back and forth between the merry go round, the petting zoo which also offered pony rides, and the tent containing various irish breeds of dogs.
every so often, we'd try to spend some time listening to one of the boring bands, while waiting out a rain shower.
I drank a $5 beer in a plastic cup, quickly so as not to have it diluted too much by rain water.
We did NOT get our $15 per adult worth of fun, though my 21 month old thought the animals were swell. And it was pretty cool watching her march up to an Irish Wolfhound, one of the biggest dogs god made, and just give it a big hug. My god, she's fearless.

And we'll probably go next year, if we're around, law of diminishing returns be damned. We'll bundle up if forecast calls for it; wear shoes we won't miss; pack an umbrella AND sunscreen; and maybe, like this year, my daughter's enjoyment of all parts NOT related to irish music will almost be enough to make it worth our while, should the band line up suck, the weather not cooperate, and the friends cancel.

I read today where someone has compiled a list of 15 of the most recession-proof consumer products.

The punch lines associated with this list are, to be honest, so easy and so numerous that my brain locked up, like when too many people are trying to buy tix on-line at the same time.....

In no order, here's a sample from the list.

Mac and Cheese
Spam
Chocolate
Lipstick
Fishing gear
condoms
laxatives
stomach relief meds (Tums and such)
Guns
running shoes
Cheap Wine (further clarified to be "inexpensive wine" which successfully removes the image of MD 20/20 or Wild Irish Rose from my head, and replaces it with any bottle of wine that still needs a corkscrew, but can be purchased for under $8)

"SAMPLE" is my way of saying I don't remember all fifteen items.

Where to start.....Combine Mac and Cheese and Spam, and a bottle of inexpensive domestic wine.... What color goes with Spam and Mac & Cheese, Red or White? I'd guess a white, but good luck finding one that heralds how well it complements....spam.

You'll need the tums for later, when you wake up in the middle of the night with your upper abdomen on fire.
Which is too bad, cuz you and your mate became amorous after drinking the inexpensive wine, and had 15 minutes of carnal bliss, while still being sober enough to take necessary precautions.

You then drift off to a contented sleep, not expecting to be awoken by indigestion three hours later.

By the way, if you eat enough spam...you won't need laxatives. Please consult a physician before attempting this cure.

If more people owned guns, fewer people would need to buy high end running shoes to motivate themselves to run.
Sadly, article did not highlight a exponential growth in shooting lessons, target practice, etc.

The list, without comment, is pretty humorous, and most of the punchlines were funnier in my head, so I'll dispense with the humour now.

Had someone tell me the other day that make up in general, is recession proof, that women will continue to spend the $$$ on make up, lipstick, nail polish, hair care products, regardless of how tight money becomes. Kinda makes women sound a bit shallow, and the person who told me this is herself a woman.
I'm not sure I agree with her. At the very least, many women will downgrade as money tightens. Bye bye, high end dept. store cosmetic counter, hello CVS.

Fishing gear - nearest and dearest to my heart. Article said that not only is sale of fishing gear and tackle on the rise, but fishing trips are on the rise as well.

Fishing has always been a cheap way to really relax. If more people realize this, and more folks also realize it's a cheap, fun morning out for the whole family and a way to spend QT with their kids, there's no downside. And you can even pick up dinner while you're out if you're lucky, or not finicky about what you eat.
So props to all the new fishermen, as long as they don't all decide to fish where I fish, and as long as they all pick up after themselves.
Which, by the way, will never happen.

So expect a similar increase in the # of empty worm containers, beer bottles and crushed cigarette packs, coming to a river bank near you. We call the "keep-what-ever-we-catch-regardless-of-legality-don't-own-a-fishing-license-screw-picking-up-after-ourselves" folks bucketheads.
Guys who really enjoy fishing for the sake of fishing, guys who "Get it" hate the bucketheads, and....you should, too.

Finally, from a red-blooded american guy standpoint, I'm a big fan of the combo of chocolate, wine and lipstick. It just smacks of potential and promise.

Mississippi Gulf Coast - part 1 - 3.75 years after Katrina

Sitting in my M.I.L's office looking out at the Gulf.
I remarked three years ago that her view had improved, thanks to Katrina.

It's not changed much in three years.

For those that didn't know, her home was one of thousands completely leveled by the storm surge caused by the high winds of Katrina. All that was left were the wood floors and the in-ground pool. The pool was how they figured out where her house used to be.

You see footage of volcano-caused tidal waves hitting an unsuspecting third world country, on various cable channels? That's pretty much what happened here, in the good ol' USofA.

However, levies broke, flooding a portion of a larger city 85 minutes to the west, and most folks didn't hear much about the MS coast, in comparison.

We went berry picking this evening, as wild blackberries are at their peak right now.
We got a couple of big bowls, went out the front door, and..... walked to the lot next door.
We've seen folks stopping behind the house, up the street, etc, off and on all day, and finally figured out what they were doing.

Y' see, there have only been three houses rebuilt on the block in the 3.75 years since Katrina leveled everything. Nature has a way of reclaiming it's turf, if left alone to do so.

Past trips (post-katrina) have given us a riot of birds of prey, living in the neighborhood, and non-domesticated animal tracks in the sand on the beach nearby.

I'm a fan of nature, so got a kick out of this, while still being saddened by the fact that the area's been so incredibly slow to re-build.

But, dammit, you're supposed to go pick wild berries....in the wild. Not where your neighbor's house used to be.
A couple doors down on the other side of the street, there are 8-10 young fir trees scattered in a loose circle around the foundation of a house. A couple more years, you're going to have a small grove going. There are wild flowers everywhere.

And it's quiet. Really quiet.
Still.

I'm within view of the beach highway, it's not supposed to be this quiet.

Blah, blah. You get the picture.

Went to mass at the roller rink this morning. My church was on the beach, and met the same fate as so many other structures. God's house fared no better than my mother in law's.
Or, ironically, the priests' house, (they live next door, and were the 2nd house to rebuild on the block).

So they worked out a deal with the local knights of columbus, and an out of business roller rink was purchased (my MIL brokered the deal) and converted into a church and class rooms.
Lots of the conversion work was done gratis, by the Sea Bee's. I was down here when it all started, and was amazed by the way that everyone who could, just plain stepped up.

I still think that the removal of the disco ball was short sighted, as it really could have added a certain something to the catholic mass.

My vacation is just starting, there are many more days, and hopefully there will be more to write about.