About
M o n a x,
Yet another blog.

Tony Adams
email: tony at atoms.net

web: atoms.net

Friends / Links

All content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

AcktiveTrans
A couple of weeks ago, Kara and I attended the annual member meeting of the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation. At the meeting we were informed that the organization had changed its name to better describe its expanded mission. The CBF is now the Active Transportation Alliance.

At the time I was somewhere between crestfallen and dumbfounded, but I figured that I should give the change some time to sink in. Perhaps I'd get used to it.

Almost three weeks have gone by and I've moved from crestfallen to livid. The name is horrible. Even worse than the vague name is the cold and corporate logo.

Pedestrians, transit users and bicyclists certainly have a lot of overlapping interests. I commute to work on a bike almost every day of the year. I do most of my shopping on a bike and do as much riding to social and entertainment events as possible on a bike. But it is great to walk once in a while also. One sees far more stuff at walking speed and when one only needs to watch out for motor vehicles when crossing streets. I also use public transit once in a while - sometimes in conjuction with a bike trip and sometimes not. I'm grateful for the work that the CBF has done to get the Metra and the CTA to be more accomodating of bikes. As a user of all these modes of "active transportation" it is obvious that improving transit and conditions for walking will make Chicago not just a better place to bike, but a better place to live.

I don't have a problem with an expanded mission as long as the historical mission of bicycle advocacy does not get neglected. But I joined the CBF because it was the local bicycling organization. It did more than advocacy, it - and at the time I could say "we" - celebrated biking and recognized that biking was more than just a way to get from point A to point B.

Bicycling is more than just a mode of transportation. As often as I can, I go for aimless rides because it is a fun and glorious thing to do. I get some exercise and I don't pollute or need to send funds out of the country to fill my tank, but I don't do it for those reasons. I do it for the sheer joy of motion, feeling the wind on my face, seeing a new neighborhood or seeing an old neighborhood in a new light, from a particularly flexible vantage point on a finely tuned, but simple and inexpensive old American machine that allows my body to propel us along with amazing efficiency and impressive control. One is never more engaged in motion than when one is having a great bike ride. If it was about transportation than why would all of my best rides be big circles? The best of biking is not about getting from point A to point B, but about getting from point A and back to point A again with the greatest possible amount of fun. That is not transportation. That is riding.

By removing any reference to bicycles from the name, the organization has exorcised its very soul.

The most appalling aspect of the change is that they did this without consulting their membership. It seems that they (over)paid consultants to run this crap past some focus groups, but the members, people who allegedly drive the organization were not consulted. Institutions are generally soul-less, so this should have come as no surprise. But the CBF seemed different. It probably _was_ different.

I will give it a bit more time, but my current plan is to request a refund of this year's membership dues and will not renew my membership next year.

[] permanent link

End the War on Terror - Gary Kamiya at Salon
The last thing I want to do with this blog is just post links to "real" pieces and perhaps add a line or two of glowing praise or bitter lament, but once in a while I reserve the right to take the easy path. Especially when something is as good as: Why Obama should end the "war on terror" by Gary Kamiya at Salon.

Stuff like this gives me a shred of hope.

[] permanent link

I will spend
Upon learning that the RNC spent $150k on clothing and accessories for Sarah Palin and her family in September, liberal whiners are suggesting that us average joes won't spend $150k on clothing in our lifetimes.

Well based on an average of my last three months spending on clothing, aproximmately $15 a month, I could EASILY get up to $150k in my lifetime. I would only have to live for ~833 years.

[] permanent link

So much for iGoogle
For most of this year my default startpage* has been Google's portal iGoogle. While iGoogle is not perfect, it seemed to provide the best balance between simplicity and power for my needs. A while ago Google started to experiment with the layout moving the main navigation tabs from the top where they were mostly out of the way and at any rate only used one line or so of valuable screen space to the side were the two (in my case) tabs now result in an entire column of almost nothing. The result is a huge and absurd waste of space. During the experimentation phase of the project one could turn it off. Google now appears to be imposing the new layout on all their users.

It is bad enough that this change is imposed on us without giving us any option to turn it off, but the dealbreaker for me was that this wretched waste of screen real estate was imposed on us silently. One day the screen is just 80% less useful - 20% full of nothing but two links which formerly stayed on top of the display area out of the way. I'm sure there is a plan up someone's sleeve to add more tabs in that column - or perhaps I failed to add them myself? But my experience right now is that iGoogle has outfeatured its usefulness.

I'm switching back to netvibes.

*actually my browsers tend to start with a set of four or five tabs including ssome kind of widgety portal thingy such as iGoogle or netvibes.

[] permanent link

a route and a test of schmoogle map embedding

View Larger Map

[] permanent link

Live Music Four Nights in a Row
Thurs Sept 25 Calexico at Millenium Park. Calexico always puts on a great show, but this was all the way over the top. They redefined the top and went so far over it that it probably looked like the bottom from up there. If they could see it at all.

Friday Sept 26 Coctails, Anteitam and KatJon at the Hideout. Pretty amazing show.

Saturday Sept 27 Handsome Family, Megan Reilly backed by Anteitam!) and Speck Mountain at the Hideout. I cannot even begin to describe how great this show was.

Friday and Saturday night's shows were the Carrot Top Records Sweet 16 Party the proceeds of which were directed to the Accelerated Cure Project.

Sun Sept 28 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at the Riv - this was one of those "I glad I can say that I saw him live" musicians who you then realize that he is one of those rare acts who despite putting on a heck of a show, might be better enjoyed via their recordings.

[] permanent link

Cowhorn Project
The bullhorn bar on the Schwinn project got a push by way of a broken front brake cable.

I had been accumulating the parts for a few weeks and figured that I might get around to it later in the Autumn (Glorius Autumn!). But having new cables laying around already rendered doing the new bars an obvious solution to the busted cable problem since routing the cables was gonna be the hardest part of the project. Or so I thought.

The picture shows the aero bar brake handles installed upside down. That was not my plan, but after I'd sawed up the new drop bars (thanks Ross!) and removed the old stock drop bars and was in the process of mounting the brakes I realized that the aero bars had a slot for routing the cable out, but it was only on one side - the top. It still makes no sense to me, but there I was with only a couple of choices: either fly the cables out of the top, which would look sloppy and diminish the value of a simpler kit, or, drill some kind of new escape route for the cable, which given my set of skills would be some combination of dangerous and impossible.

Who saves the day but the above mentioned Ross, who gave me the wide drop bars for the project in the first place, "How about mounting them upside down?" he asked. So that is what I did.

Except for those brake levers themselves, the project is a huge improvement. There can't be that much difference in weight, but the bike feels like it lost ten pounds. The bars are about an inch wider then the stock drop bars they replaced. I'm not sure if I can get used to how wierd they look and feel with the upside down levers, but I'm gonna give it a shot. If I had it all to do over again I'd get some bar end reverse brake levers, some of which have the added advantage of being available in all black.

• new bars: free
• tape: $4 (really! at Irv's)
• aero bar levers: $20
• cables $8

[] permanent link

Customer Service Almost as Bad as Netflix
Here is the text I submitted to a How Is Our Customer Service survey from VirginMobileUSA:

really? you actually care? First I email to inform the team that the images were not working for me UNLESS I used Internet Explorer. To me, this is just unacceptable. I can't stand using anything from Microsoft, especially their lame ass browser. I get a response asking me to CALL TO RESOLVE MY PROBLEM. I AM NOT THE ONE WITH THE PROBLEM. I was just reporting a problem out of the goodness of my heart.

Then I get this response telling me to, wait, this is just the most insane part, telling me to ADJUST MY SETTINGS IN IE.

I freaking E.

If anyone else even came close to providing the kind of deal i get from VirginMobile I'd be out of here in hot second.

[] permanent link

Bike Insurance?
I just caught wind of some insurance which is supposedly available for bicycles. The anecdotal rate I heard for a Chicago resident is $130 a year. I've had one bike stolen (so far) in the twenty years that I've lived in Chicago. Twenty years at this rate works out to $2600 for the insurance. I hesitate to add it ALL up, but while my total spending for bikes, maintenance, parts, accessories certainly adds up, insurance would not reduce expenditures on tires, patches, freewheels, bearings, etc anyway.

My Chicago Bike Purchase History
since 1988

1. The bike that got stolen (can't recall what it was < $300 for sure)
2. Ross Mountain Bike ~ $250
3. Raliegh Hybrid ~ $300
4. The French Bike - $50 (broke crank and sold bike via CL for $30 so) $20
5. The Wisconsin era Trek 500 free (but $300 of parts and labor)
6. The Chicago era Schwinn Continental $80 + $200 (new wheel, single speed conv, etc)

But wait, it gets worse. Let's imagine that one put that $130 a year into some kind of savings vehicle with an interest rate of 4%. After twenty years that account would be worth $3,871.15.

The moral of the story is certainly not an original idea, but like most good ideas it is worth repeating:
Don't Insure Anything You Can Afford to Replace.

[] permanent link

Open Source IM Client
Pidgin is an open source IM client. I just installed it on a Windows machine at work. (I know, it is appalling to mention Windows. Sorry). It works and looks great. I recommend it to anyone who finds herself stuck using Windows.

I found myself growing weary of the antiquated look of Gaim. It looked like some cheesy Linux app hastily ported over to windows. I finally decided to look around for something better.

The hilarous part is that Pidgin turns out to BE Gaim refreshed and renamed after some legal hassles with AOL. (As if we needed any more reasons to hate AOL). It has been out for over a year.

It is axiomatic in software circles that people don't bother to upgrade software when their existing stuff gets the job done without causing too much pain.

Apparently that is true even for software developers.

[] permanent link

Bad Chain Goes Bankrupt
Speaking of weakness, I also have something like a weakness for cheesy family casual restaurant chains. I'm not sure what it behind it - some mixuture of nostalgia and a desire to embrace the mainstream - or at least to try to understand the mainstream experience? I dunno. All I know is that even though I know that the odds are good that the food will be bad, I still feel something pulling me toward the soul-less chains that infest suburbia, the interstate exchanges and even formerly sacred places.

My most recent adventure provided further data for the "food will be bad" argument. The wyfe and I stopped in at a Bennigan's in Chicago for a beer and a snack on our way to a (yet another bad) play at the Goodman. We somewhat miraculously managed to get some good local beer and an order of chips and salsa. The chips were fine - not great, but edible at least. The salsa however was an embarassment to the name. The flavor and consistency were identical to that of a cheap generic pasta sauce out of a jar. No. Make that a can. It was just about unbeliveable - I mean, they should perhaps get a speck of credit for being creative, but at least carry on the creativity to the menu - call it "Chips and Ragu".

With this trauma fresh in mind it therefore came as absolutely no surprise to see that the entire chain has gone bankrupt.

[] permanent link

AMA
I have a bit of a weakness for joining membership supported organizations. My most recent binge was joing the American Motorcyclist Association. The group looked pretty good on paper, but I was not aware of a ton of controversy and bad sentiment which had sprung up over the past decade over the group's priorities and organization. They do still list their priorities as "Rights, Riding and Racing" in that order, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for a while and see how it pans out.

I was further encouraged today by the news that Erik Buell was appointed to the board of the AMA. The Buell website clims that: "Buell Motorcycles are born from the belief that every innovation must be focused on doing what's right for the rider." Which sounds like a marketing schpiel, but as far as I can tell, this is actually true. I don't have any interest in racing. I think it is a bad idea to burn fossil fuels for entertainment or sport - so it was difficult for me to get very excited about the Buell mission in general when it is so wrapped up in producing sport bikes.

But my Buell Ulysses just happens to be a sport bike - albeit without the uncomfortable ergonomics of a typical sport bike. It also happens to be a great touring bike and handles crappy roads, dirt roads and gravel pretty brilliantly. I bought it because I had become convinced that an "Adventure" bike was as close as I'd get to the ideal motorcycle for me. I had been planning on finding an airhead BMW GS or something like that, but a series of catastrophic transmission failures on my 1982 BMW R100RT disillusioned me with that marque. Casting a somewhat wide net, I started looking for a new bike in the spring of 2007 and stumbled onto this engineering marvel. I was hooked.

If you would have told me ten years ago that I'd be re-assured to find that the head of a domestic sport bike company was appointed to the board of the AMA, I would have laughed in your face. But we all change and here today I'm greeting that news with a mixture of delight and relief.

(It is ok. You can call me a dork.)

[] permanent link

Connect to Server
I actually used AppleCare today, so I feel like less of a sap for buying it.

Upon trying to use the "Connect to Server" feature of Mac OS X, I found that I could not type in the "Server Address" box. Pretty weird. I did the usual diagnosticky stuff, scoured the internet for docs or forum discussions and even resorted to the Microsoft Tuneup (restarting the computer). No luck.

So I called AppleCare and after about ten minutes the helpful tech had me move a configuration file out of its expected spot and restart the computer. It worked like a charm. SO just to save you a call should it ever happen to you, here is what fixed the probem.

1. Find this file: "com.apple.finder.plist" in /[Your Home Directory]/Library/Preferences/
2. Trash the file (or to be extra safe, just move it to your desktop).
3. Restart the computer. If all is good, and if you have not done so already, delete the file you moved.

[] permanent link

Married!
Really! Check it out!

[] permanent link

Ad Long Last
After much fruitless resistance, I've finally caved in to the relentless demands to show ads on this blog. Don't worry, I'll try to spend most of the income on local, organic ale (and liquor) and parish carnival raffle tickets.

In case there was any doubt, it turns out in fact, that I am a complete moron. I set up a Google Adsense account a couple of days ago. Trivial! Then I generated an ad and added the code to my homopage - also trivial. I did not see any ads. The help docs at Schmoogle warn that in some rare cases it may take up to 48 hours for ads to appear on a new site. So I wait.

Two days later I'm still not seeing any ads. I pore over the docs again and notice a suggestion in the Troubleshooting section about... you've already guessed? Ad blocking utilities.

d'oh

As soon as I disabled the ad blocking for my domain I started seeing ads immediately.

PS
I will be performing in Milly's Orchid Show on Saturday July 19, 2008.

[] permanent link

Spring 2008
This is just a stub, ok, a set of stubs which I hope to flesh out later. This is a partial list of stuff I've been taking in or taking on lately.

• Jim White and Orso at the Old Town School of Folk Music
• Drews Eatery - vegan Italian sausage!
• 250 Mile Motorbike ride with my friend Mike
• The Strangerer by Mickle Maher - an amazingly great play. I've worked a few shifts at the box office
• attended a prayer service and opening of The Keiskamma Altarpiece. It was pretty amazing.
• I got my R100RT back from Memphis!
• Veggie Bite - sure it is horrifyingly decorated, and the service is erratic, but it is vegetarian fast food! It is a good time to be alive.
• Will Dunne's sweet, yet brilliant Ascension of Carlotta at the new 16th Street Theater in Berwyn (yes! Berwyn)
• Artropolis -we got in free by riding our bikes!
• Merlo on Maple - like dining on anohter planet
• Pilsen Art Walk
• Chant in Hyde Park where we discovered the Gin Mule - The Perfect Drink
• A Day at Northwestern
• Union - best pizza in Evanston
• WhiskyFest

[] permanent link

SXSW
I have an undone todo list a mile long. One of the many things on it is to at least scribble a few notes about SXSW 2008 from which I "just" returned a couple of months ago. (I back dated this file so that it would get a date closer to the event.) I just heard a song on the awesome KCRW which prompted me to go look up the Republic Tigers. One of the first hits was this badly streaming video from their showcase at SXSW - perhaps the best showcase I missed.

So forgive me dear reader, but this is one of those Notes to Myself about catching up on the life story backlog.

[] permanent link

Miles
Some participants on a local bikey mailing list have been reporting their annual miles ridden as tallied by their cyclometers. In a new(?) twist this year, one of them calculated the amount of gasoline that those miles would have consumed if travelled by automobile.

The best ideas are always worth stealing.

I don't have a cyclometer installed so I will have to guesstimate. My commute is 80 miles a week. Social, recreational and errands account for at least another 20 miles a week on average. (A lot more during the summer, but a lot less during the winter.) My average is probably more than 100 miles a week, but it is is probably somewhere around there and one hundred is such a nice even figure I think I'll stick with it.

So - 5200 miles a year on the bicycle - the equivalent of a round trip to Ketchikan, Alaska. At 25 MPG, that works out to a savings of 208 gallons. Not spewing all that pollution into the air is a good enough reason to ride, but there are of course more immediately selfish benefits as well such as the ~$645 those gallons would have cost at $3.10 per. (I am not perfect of course. I did put about 3k on my motorcycle ~45 MPG).

[] permanent link

After (new kitchen faucet)
The kitchen remodelling, started just seven years ago, has taken a great leap forward. For years I've been living with an ever so slightly leaking faucet. A new cartridge probaby would have fixed it, but the faucet was ugly and not even remotely period appropriate for the circa 1928 bungalow - so instead of fixing it the plan was to replace it. But of course I had other things to do so this got put off. Then about a month ago things got much worse. The old Moen would sometimes not shut off! I could always manage to get it to stop after a bit of fiddling, but it seemed that it would only be a matter of time before I'd have to resort to using the water supply valves. That would have been too much rigmarole for even me to bear.

The amazing thing to me is the tremendous amount of satisfaction I get from looking at the thing - or even using it - and then realizing that I am just now up to the normal baseline of most people's kitchen faucet experience. But for me, it is an occasion for immense gratitude.

[] permanent link

New Server (again)
Wow. A year and a half of neglect! I just moved atoms.net to a new host and in the process, realized that this blog was seriously neglecticated.

[] permanent link

Florence - Rome
In March of 2006, I went to Florence and Rome to look at art and architecture and see what pizza is like in Italy. I took some photos. This account is rendered more or less chronologically and probably does not take advantage of hypertext in the way that it should.

5 Marzo, 2006
Pizzaria La Routa, via Angelo Emo 25. I spend an hour wandering lost... well, sort of lost. I have a map on which I can plot my lostness nearly exactly. I was shooting for an area just outside the eastern walls of the Vatican. One wrong turn and I seemed to be irrecoverably stuck on the west side of that nutty Vatican. Not that I'd actually seen any such Vatican at that point - just a big looming can't-get around-it hill. After pursuing a few dead ends - uphill dead-ends of course, I see a pizzarria. Wasn't that what I set out to find anyway?
Here in the states we also have a thing that goes by the name "Pizza Margharita" but it is a different animal. At La Routa, and at pretty much every other dozen or so pizza places I visited, a Pizza Margherita is a thin crust pizza with a small amount of tomato sauce and a generous pile of mozzarella cheese. Not slices of fresh mozzarella, just shredded regular old mozarella. The crust at La Routa was extremely thin - the thinnest I'd have on my whole trip. A few seconds of spying at the open kitchen revealed the secret tool for this amazingly thin and consistently thin crust - a rolling pin!

Now I'm not gonna name any names, but a dear friend of mine chastized me up one side and down the other a year or so ago for using a rolling pin on my pizza crusts. It seemed like the obvious way to go. However, in the USA it is simply not done. Observation of a few pizza chefs in action here confirmed it. After my chastizement and my abandonment of the pin my crusts DID improve dramatically. But I was never aiming for anything as thin as the La Routa crust. So there you have it.

Slices or Squares?
Another burning controversy in Chicago anyway is the Slice vs Squares debate. Chicago pizzarias have been cutting their larger pizzas into tiny squares since the beginning of time. The reasoning is that given the less foldable crust, a small square is easier to manage than a big sloppy slice of the size that would result from cutting a huge pizza into slices. Newcomers to the area, especially those from the east coast find this practice to be a heresy of the most soul endangering proportions. A pizza must be cut into slices! they claim. In Rome if you get whole pizza it is not cut AT ALL except by the customer. You get a pie perhaps a bit larger than your plate. There is none of this small, large, extra-large, somewhat extra large rigamarole either. If you need more pizza you just order more pizzas.

to be continued

[] permanent link

From: viewer@pbs.org

Subject: PBS
Date: December 16, 2005 9:04:23 AM CST
To: tony@asdfasdfatomssdfgfds.net

Dear Mr. Adams:

Thank you for writing to PBS.

We apologize for the frustration you have experienced checking the schedules of the two PBS stations you receive. We have forwarded your comments to our Interactive department for their review and consideration. Feedback from our viewers is important when we are making our decisions, so thank you for writing.

We hope you continue to enjoy the wide variety of programming available on your local PBS stations.

Sincerely,
Rosie
PBS Viewer Services

At 04:39 PM 12/15/2005 -0800, you wrote:

----- Original Message -----
Thursday, December 15, 2005 1:54:14 PM
Subject: Contact Us
To: Bowser
"Click your preferred PBS station."

I don't prefer either one of Chicago's PBS stations. I simply want to know when the program will be on. It may be more convenient for me to watch the program on either one of Chicago's PBS stations.

By forcing me to choose one or the other, I have to go back and go through the whole thing again to see if the broadcast on whichever station I didn't choose the first time works better with my schedule.

Please consider adjusting your UI.

Thanks and keep up the (otherwise) great work,

Tony

[/software] permanent link

The 30th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was last week. NPR did a largish piece on it. Of course they played bits of the song throughout the piece.
I never realized it before, but that song was about an event which had *just* happened. A top forty song which told the epic story of a contemporary catastrophe. There was actual storytelling in a song that became a huge hit. It is unimaginable today. Of course there are countless examples in the tiny niche markets of folk or alt-college-whatever and I suppose a decipherable story graces the occasional hip-hop song, but who ever hears the story? Who will still be talking about any of them in 30 years?

[/arts] permanent link

Taste of Polonia
By the time I got there around 6:45 or so the Ampol Aires were on the polka stage. They were awesome. The real stuff. I cannot even begin to describe how great they were. I enjoyed them tremendously even *before* I drank any beer.

So anyway, the beer situation. It looked mighty bleak initially. There was only one beer tent in the big main area of the fest and it was only selling Okocim. Okocim is not bad, but like most european beers, I find it boring. I get one for $4.50 and wander around listening to music and ogling the dames, of which there were gajillions. Then, over toward the polka stage (the west end of the fest) I find another beer tent - more of a hut. They have the regular Okocim on tap near the hut, but the hut is selling cans of different kind of Okocim. I ask one of the hombres what the deal is with the cans. He tells me that it is "Moscne" which is Polsku for "strong". He claimed it was 7% as opposed to the regular stuff which is around five percent alcohol. It costs a dollar more, but the math suggests that it is the better deal, assuming a goal of most alcohol for my drunken dollar.

The moscne is MUCH yummier in addition to packing a bigger whallop. It is slightly darker, not quite amber. I wander around more. I listen to a U2 cover band for about a minute. They did an adequate job. The interesting part was the singer. He looked a LOT like Bono - kind of like a younger version of what Bono looks like now rather than the Bono of 1985. He also had the swagger down pat. But it was way non-compel.

I spent most of that part of the evening enjoying the Ampol Aires. I did watch Hetman for a while also.

Hetman was fine. Nothing eighties about them unless there was a style of metal in the eighties that I was not aware of. They were also 100% non-compel. I did like the fact that they sang in Polish and yammered entirely in Polish. Makes for a more "authentic" experience. I went back for more Polka and another Moscne.

Flush with drunken pride, I ask for a moscne with as much care as possible to pronounce it the way the initial hombre taught me. The volunteer tried to explain that he did not speak polish and had no idea what I wanted. He had just started his shift. I dunno why, (well, i guess I was drunck already) but I had to go along with the misconception. I yelped "beer" in my best fake eastern european accent. He reached into the icy tub, grabbed a bottle and pointed at it. I just assumed that they had bottles and cans of the moscne, (it was the only beer on the menu as far as I could tell) so I nodded. Well it turns out that the bottles were Okocim Porter.

8%!

and even yummier than the moscne. Like most porters it was rich and dark and a bit too sweet. Nice. Unfortunately they had a very limited supply of the porters. By the time I finished it and returned for another they had run out.

Then around eight thirty the Ampol Aires made an announcement. The next act that was scheduled to perform on the polka stage was stuck in traffic or something so they would play "a little longer". They played two more sets, like two more hours closing down the festival. The next act never showed up. Or perhaps they did show up and the awesomeness of the Ampol Aires intimidated them to death or something.

Around this time I'm wandering past the stage where the U2 band had been playing and I hear an announcement about clearing space in front of the stage. A pretty big crowd was gathered so I walk over to investigate. Canned music starts playing from the PA. It sounded like Strauss, but I dunno what it was. Then a large group of dancers in (what I'm assuming was) traditional Polish garb start spinning and twirling and well, you know, dancing in front of the stage. Now, being a male and all that I'm not very interested in dance, especially as a spectator sport. But these kids were really really good and the costumes were awesome. The young women were mostly all mostly beautiful. I was transfixed. Sure, I was drunck by then, but it was almost moving if you'll pardon the expression. I think they did four pieces, each one with a costume change. There were at least two "squads" who changed costumes while the other group was doing their bit. It was entirely great. Even now in the clear light of my hangover I STILL want some of those cossacky boots and trousers.

The Funky Polak was 100% boring. Poland's answer to Eminem. Did I mention that he was boring? I suppose rap in a language that one does not understand has a pretty big handicap right off the bat.

Think Floyd followed Hetman on the main stage. Now, again, I was well drunk by then so YMMV but I loved them. They had three women backup singers so they could actually sort of pull off Dark Side of the Moon and stuff like that. The main singer dude did a fine job of singing. I fergit which song it was, the lead guitar player sang lead vocals on one song and not quite adequately, but given the enormity of the task (imitating Pink Floyd!) I must say that they managed it pretty well.

I've been to a lot of festivals. This was the only one where the bands all stop playing for a brief break at last call so that everyone can go get one more beer without missing any of the action. Awesome people those Poles. Bravo.

The admission charge is a whopping $7. Either it is higher this year or I forgot how much it was. That was bit of a surprise. The festival is held on private property so unlike the usual Chicago street faire, the admission charge probably isn't optional. Also, the food and beer tickets are only sold in $5 sheets so it is quite possible to end up with a few unused tickets, effectively raising your admission. This is a minor issue though, and not one that can't be solved by applying funnel cake.

I was tired when I headed over to the fest, but the combo of all that great music and beer or something gave me a huge second wind. After the fest I rode down to The Mutiny where I drank a lot more beer and watched a band from Rockford, whose name I've already forgot and the Venom Lords, who were good, but have a new less cute, less female bass player. Wah.

Then I got a beer and a slice at Santullos who restoreth my faith in pizza. (Ever love a place so much that you wish you didn't? I'll be crushed if they ever close.)

And now I wonder why I'm hung over?

Oh and I almost forgot the funniest moment of the night. I'm riding down Milwaukee on my way down to The Mutiny. A car load of young latino men yell something at me as they pass. I honestly didn't hear it well enough to understand what they said. I just assume in these cases that it was something unpleasant. I catch up with them at a red light at Irving Park and, being very drunck and stupid I approach the car and ask them what is up. The guy in the passenger seat looks at me, smiles and ROLLS UP THE WINDOW! I was SO dissed, but it was just entirely hilarious. I nearly fall off my bike laughing and I see that in the car they all appear to be laughing also.

[] permanent link

50 Mile Commute
For the first time today I rode the bicycle both ways to (and uh, from) Wheaton.

I'm pretty tired now.

I love how riding in direction one all the time, you can just totally miss stuff. Like a trail I discovered this morning through a little section of forest on the Des Plaines from Thatcher in River Forest over to Madison at the River. Coming from the west it is not at all obvious. I might have never seen it if I always took the bike on the train every morning. The trail replaces a few blocks of nasty riding on Madison. The forest there was refreshing. It seemed so much healthier and free of beer cans and crap compared to the river trails north of belmont.

Then, on the way home, with less of a schedule to worry about, instead of following the east/west trail I traveled in the morning, I kept going north along the river (sort of). It remained beautiful, but the best part was yet to come.

After crossing Washington I stumble upon the Thatcher Woods Savanna.

it was quite different than most of the cook county forest preserve woods, which are nice enough, but don't seem particularly healthy or "natural". This joint was really nice. And then, as if the savanna was not cool enough, at the northern end of it, some actual topography. There are some fairly serious ravines. I keep going and I stumble out onto the Union Pacific West line tracks, onto a road that I've seen many many times from the train.

[] permanent link

My Bike on Metra
I dragged my trusty Raleigh onto Metra's UP-West line (Chicago-Geneva) twice this week. My commute is a reverse, so I was able to take advantage of the program to get to my more or less 9-5 job in Wheaton.

The conductors have been entirely cooperative and helpful. Given Metra's long opposition to bikes on the trains, I wasn't sure what to expect.

Tying up the bike with a bungee has been the only even remotely difficult part of the process. One of the conductors told me that they were "trained to make sure that bikers secured their bikes with a bungee, but we were not told how." There is a bar underneath the row of folding seats in the bike area. I've been attaching my bike to that. It seems suboptimal for securing a bike since it is pretty close to the floor. (perhaps 8 inches?) Fortunately there is very little lateral motion, the train does not whip around any curves at high speed, so perhaps all that is really necessary is to secure the bike from rolling front-ward or backward. I lean the bike a bit to help stabilize it laterally.

Before last week, I'd ride my bike to the Oak Park station (about 7.5 miles) and leave the bike locked up there. By taking my bike on the train in the morning, I'm now able to ride all the way home from Wheaton - a great 25 or 30 mile ride, much of it along the Prairie Path.

a Except for Thursday. You probably already know this, but no bikes are allowed on the trains during any of the days of a major downtown festival such as Bluesfest (this weekend) and the Taste. Even though the festival had not started yet Thursday morning, the ban is an all day thing. I was not allowed on the train. As a result, I was an hour later than usual arriving at work. There was an announcement over the station PA about the bike ban given with plenty of time for me to take my bike down the stairs and lock it up. I was in a gambling mood and thought I'd take a chance that the conductors might listen to reason, that they might be allowed a bit of discretion. No such luck. The conductor who had the awkward task of refusing me, was about as sympathetic as one could get, short of letting me on anyway. I understand that they are in a crappy position and while I was slightly pushy, I remained polite and understanding about it.

The new train schedules state that eight bikes are allowed on that particular train. I dunno what will happen if the program gets more popular. Now, at Oak Park and Wheaton anyway, the doors only open on two cars. Practically, that means four bikes. Getting a bike from one car to another is possible of course, but it would not be easy.

And what about the day when there are already eight bikes on the train? It is early yet, but that day may come. Users of the system should be prepared for such an event.

Overall it has been a very positive experience. I even made a few new acquaintances as a result of the spectacle of something new and encouraging on the train.

[] permanent link

club €uro
For years now I've wondered about this place. I seem to ride past it several times a week. I figured it was some big dumb euro disco, so checking it out was not high on my priority list.

Last night whilst riding on the Irving Park sidewalk east from St. Pascal's I have to stop when I get to Club €uro. Their empty sidewalk beer garden and a large row of motorcycles were blocking all but about six inches of the sidewalk. Slightly drunk, I raised the issue with the doorman in a polite, but still somewhat obnoxious manner.

He said I could "go around" all the obstacles. Technically of course, this was true. I'm just glad I was not in a wheelchair.

Instead of raising a fuss about it I locked up my bike and went in. I was intrigued by the motorcycles anyway. There was a beautiful Indian and a really cool rat bike with a steel mesh seat. Most of the bikes appeared to be customized metric cruisers. Not stupid choppers, but tasteful and functional bikes.

The interior decor was surprisingly cool. It was a bit busy, but there was nothing gaudy about it.

The loud euro dance videos were also surprisingly non-suck. (I did have the beerphones on by then of course so YMMV.)

I still don't know if they have any good beer. The fifteen or so people who were at the bar were all drinking Becks and Corona (yuk). I asked about cheap beer and after a bit of back and forth the bartender suggested the Becks on tap. A half liter mug of that was only $3!

So a bit after 10 pm I'm sitting there nursing the half liter and I see a couple of guys move a keg out the entryway. Did I mention the keg? No? That was a bit odd. There was a keg with a tap and air pump sitting in a tub of ice by the door. I didn't ask. So anyway I see these guys moving the keg and then immediately thereafter four people on motorcycles ride *in through the front door* of the club. They swing around the bar and park their bikes on the dance floor. It was truly awesome. No one acted like this was anything unusual.

[/arts] permanent link

Carne

The band last night at the St. Pascal's Parish Carnival was "Network". They are not my new favorite band. They had a horn section, which was pretty cool. They played covers. The singer resembled Mike Ditka. Old white guys. Their best tune was their version of Springsteen's "Rosalita". It was almost embarrassing - the enormous gulf between that band of old white guys playing tired old music being watched and absurdly danced to by tired old white people - and most of the people at the carnival - kids who had less than zero interest in such a spectacle. But perhaps that is the traditional function of the beer tent at such an event? To entertain the parents?

There was one exceptionally thoughtful moment. Three children - very young - like between 2 and 6 years old plopped down right in front of one of the PA stacks. The bass player noticed this and convinced them to move somewhere safer for their little ears.

[/arts] permanent link

Seven Shows in Four Days
thursday:
Wooden Leg at the Hideout - fantastic as usual. We really have a treasure in Kelly Hogan. We are lucky to be alive in Chicago at this moment in musical history.

friday:
1. Rizwan-Muazzam - (Quawwali) at the OTS of Folk Music - amazing.
2. Hardscrabble at the Horseshoe (They have cans of PBR for $2, so they are officially ok by me, despite the disney-texas schtick.) Hardscrabble was fun. They call themselves a "jug band without a jug" which is better than anything I could come up with.

saturday:
1. Andrew Bird, Archer Prewitt and Clyde Federal at the Metro. Bird was boring and I left after about three songs. The opening acts were both pretty great. Clyde Federal finally found a really good bass player.
2. Blind Robin at the Horseshoe - I really enjoyed them. I can barely remember what they sound like, I was pretty drunk by then, but it was countryish rock I think. Perhaps Americana? I dunno.
3. The house "band" at Serbian place on Montrose. I'm still amazed at how non-western that music is. It freaks me out a little. If I just heard it and did not know what it was I would think that it was arabic. (it might have been four! but there was no band at The Fantasy Lounge)

tonight:
volunteering at the OTS for Robbie Folks' "Secret Country" series.

Seven shows in four days. It is time to give mr liver and mr and mrs eardrum a break.

[/arts] permanent link

Bombay Talkie and others

[/arts/film] permanent link

Left Luggage
1998 Left Luggage directed by Jeroen Krabbé is one of my Add It to Your Netflix Queue recomendations. Sweet and sad, it is also a rare sympathetic treatment of the Hasidim in film.

[Bloggy Note: My intention was to focus this blog on my production of art (or whatever) rather than consumption or criticism of it, but this year, I've decided to expand that, partially to share my humble brilliance with my huge audience, but also to perhaps serve as a art log so that I won't accidentally get a film or a book from the library (or whatever) which I had already consumed.]

[/arts/film] permanent link

RSS Feed - Available All Along

My friend Warren set up one of these blosxom blogs recently in order to keep people posted about his trip to india. I'm trying to conceal my envy (about the trip of course, not the blog), but failing miserably. But I digress...

In the course of helping him debug some little issue he was having with his blog, he mentioned something about my RSS feed. "What RSS feed?" I asked him. Then he pointed to the little RSS icon which shows up in FIrefox when one loads up the humble monax. Wow. Who knew?

For those of who need a manual link to the feed, I think it is http://www.atoms.net/blog/index.rss

[] permanent link

Wheaton Public Library

The Wheaton Public Library is awesome. It is big enough to have what you want, but not like CPL big, which has what you want, but it is in some branch in Stoney Island or Brattislava. They have this thing called the Rack, which is an expanded Great Books kind of collection, but in paperback! perfect for the commuter who is already carrying too much crap on her train schlep. They also have a pretty extensive DVD collection. There were hundreds of titles available (as opposed to the HWLC, which actually has about half a dozen available at any given time, and they mostly suck).

Great thing #3 is that, like Evanston, they will affix a sticker to one's CPL card and extend all privileges (except use of the internet terminals, but who needs that?).

So with my jewelbox for "Raising Victor Vargas" in hand, I approach the circulation desk to apply for the sticker. I fork over my CPL card to the nice eastern european librarian. She calls the CPL to see if I am worthy.

At this point, I need to interrupt to make sure that you have the accent correct. She might have been of Russian origin, but it is hard to tell. Just think of the voice of Natasha Fatale from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. You know how some native eastern european speakers will leave out articles when speaking in english? "Boris! Take squirrel to meat slicer and..."

So after her conversation with the CPL she tells me straight up: "You are delinquent." It was all I could do to not crack up on the spot.

My friend Jamie, a CPL librarian pointed out that the sentence is correct. I know that, but in my mind, I mentally add the articles when I hear that kind of accent. So it sounded to me, or I thought it sounded to me like she was saying that I was *A* delinquent.

[] permanent link

oughtFour
This is not a new resolution. I swear.

There is so much I neglected to blog on about last year. In the light of hindsight here are a few highlights.

- My world got bigger.
g e o g r a p h i c a l l y
Not in the I Traveled to Belarus sense of the word. My local world got bigger. Part of it was working for a month or so up in Lake County. There are beautiful forest preserves up there and lots of just plain rural-ness up yonder. For the whole of my fifeen years of living in Chicago, I've never been up there for anything except passing through on 94 enroute to Wisconsin. Expansion westward came as a result of exhausting Chicago's north side streets and having a very flexible summer schedule. I could take the time for long rides out to the suburbs such as the rides out to Elk Grove Village I blogged about earlier in the year.

c u l t u r a l l y
One of the benefits of single life is that you can pretty much do whatever you want - even something as weird as attending Taste of Elmwood Park. I've always loved the idea of street fairs. Live music, beer and sunshine are all great things. But most of the more popular street fairs in Chicago have become un-bearably crowed with trixies and chads. However, smaller streetfairs out in the bungalow belt and suburbs In 2004 I also stumbled onto the phenomenon of the parish carnival. A great many catholic churches in chicago and the surrounding suburbs throw an annual carnival to raise funds - and perhaps to have some fun or at least provide some fun for their whole neighborhood. Having zero interest in the obvious aspects of the carnivals, the hokey rides for children and, uh, well that was all I thought there was to it until I happened to be riding past St. Barts on Addison in early summer. I heard a live band churning out some old Skynard. Of course I had to investigate. Lacking a parking lot, often the logical venue for a carnival, St Barts closed down the street on the west side of the church for the rides and stuff, and strung the rest of the carnival out along an alley with some of the event (bingo) held inside the church. Tucked away in the belly of all this in a small courtyard was the beer "garden". Under a big yellow and white striped rain fly, several dozen large tables, a couple hundred chairs, a beer stand a stage. The band, The Way Cool Band, which was so decidely uncool that they may have zeroed out the odometer and started back round the cool-uncool spectrum.

This post is massively not finished, but I accidentally published it and then I thought that if I left it up here, I might actually be shamed into finishing it. We will see...

[] permanent link

For a long time now I've been thinking that I'd blown a speaker. I was
hearing a bit of distortion. Too lazy to investigate, I just ignored it to the best of my ability. Today I couldn't take it any longer. I removed the grill from the speaker. It looked fine. Then I remembered that I had turned on the iTunes equalizer a while ago. I looked at it and saw that for some insane reason, I had the pre-amp turned up. I pushed that back down to below 0 and now everything sounds great. I just need to turn up the output device a bit. d'oh

[/arts] permanent link

Art Department
I got another job with the above mentioned movie. I've been helping out the Art Department mostly in the capacity of Set Dresser. Much of the stuff I've been doing has been as much about UNdressing the sets as dressing them.

This week we've been shooting up at Waukeegan High School, so in order to dress the sets for a film set in 1977, we have to first remove anything that would be anachronistic - the phones, computers, fax machines, much of the lighting and other fixtures. Then we replace all that stuff with vintage stuff, or with nothing at all in the case of most of the computers.

Perhaps all films work this way, but I'm really impressed with the way that everyone's opinion in the Art Department is considered and valued. We are often not just told what to do, but rather, what needs to get done and the details are up to us. As someone who was actually alive in 1977, my opinions seem to be especially valued. It is pretty cool to be more or less the lowest people in the pecking order, and yet we are still making artistic contributions to the project - not just hauling stuff around and following orders. (of course we do a lot of that also :) )

It has been a great deal of fun - mostly. The most fun I've had so far has been running a smoke machine for a School Is On Fire shot. In a big budget film a task like might have been done by some kind of specialist? I dunno.

[/arts] permanent link

Forty Five Mile Commute
This week, I started working as the IT person for the indie film production 5-25-77.

For my first impression, I thought it would be fun to arrive a totally sweaty mess, so I rode my bicycle somewhere between forty and fifty miles to get to the production office in Wadsworth, Illinois. It was a blast. I only got lost a few times. Much of my route in each direction was off-road on bike paths, the Skokie Trail on my way up, and the Des Plaines River Trail (DPRT) on my way back home. It made no sense to me why the trail up north was in such (relatively) great shape, while the same trail on the same river west of Chicago is just unmaintained dirt until today when I went looking for an url. The nice sections are in Lake County, while the crappy sections are in the County of Cook.

The trip up there took three and a half hours. The return trip took FOUR and a half hours. The return trip looked a lot more direct on the map, but the DPRT wound around a lot which probably added to the miles. Also, it got dark about half way home, so I rode much much slower. I have a light, but it is really more for making myself more visible to cars than for illuminating the road. At any decent speed it does not light up the road or trail surface far enough ahead to do much good.

It was an interesting ride, and much of it was quite beautiful, but it is just not practical to commute that way. Next time I plan to take the motorcycle.

[] permanent link

Elotes In A Cup - DIY
This year, the elote vendors in my 'hood have begun to offer Elotes in a Cup, in addition to the standard On a Stick. They prepare your elote in the usual manner, and then scrape everything off the ear into a styrofoam cup. This variation spoils a great deal of the fun, so I've never tried it that way. I mean come on - what is summer about if not food on a stick? I can certainly see the appeal though, having cleaned a lot of elote drippings from my clothing, shoes, face and bicycle. Yesterday afternoon, feeling a bit peckish and lazy I discovered a can of whole kernel corn in my pantry. I know, I know this is the midwest and to even Look at a can of corn in August is more or less criminally insane. I opened the can and drained most of the fluid. I started to eat some of the corn right out of the can. Not bad. Not bad at all. My laziness started to wane as my body absorbed all those yummy carbs. I looked around and realized that a healthy dollop of hot sauce would spice up the corn nicely. That reminded me of elotes, so I also dumped in some mayo and a generous pile of that dried parmesean cheese we all stopped using several years ago in lieu of grating our own. I skipped the squeeze parkay because, well, there is no such crap in my kitchen. I get to have SOME standards don't I? And of course a real elote gets cayenne powder and not hot sauce - but I was close enough. Elotes in a cup (or a can in this case) home made at a fourth of the price on the street!

[] permanent link

six week round up
Wow. No posty for six weeks? wt...

To my loyal readers I apologize. I will try to summarize the highlights of those six weeks as soon as I detrmine whether or not this thing is even working.

Ok and hooray, she is finally working. It has been a bit of a chore straightening all this out, so your summary will have to wait.

ciao!

[] permanent link

BMW R100RT
I've been a bit all-consumed lately by the process of consuming. Specifically I decided that it was time to get a motorcycle again, so I got one. The bike is a 1982 BMW R100RT in awesome shape for her vintage.

[] permanent link