Jejune

That's about what anything I could say for the moment would amount to, but as per my general desire to meet my self-imposed monthly quota, I'm rocking the midnight hour post.

In uninteresting news I'm clean shaven for the first time in, well I can't remember. It's an odd experience seeing the old (young) face, especially as it's hardly aged in twelve years. I don't know how the clean-shaven do it from an upkeep standpoint.

Perhaps I was subconsciously influenced by the clean faces facing me from the stage at Book of Mormon. As the first musical I've ever attended, I might also make it my last, not because it wasn't good, but on the contrary, it was just so up my alley that perhaps only Marc M. could outdo it.

Less talk more rock.

Legaré, Leg hair

Courtesy of the womanfriend I am aware of this joke or strange trend in China. I guess the old adage of wanting what you can't have applies even to body hair. So much for backhair being awkward and this blog even having a title.

Of course, I was hoping for a leg hair brand that tried to sound maybe fancy and French, but Legaré is the opposite, making furniture construction a less hairy experience by removing the necessity of tools. But alas, the world will always need tools.

Now I know that the Blackhawks have already gone and won another Stanley Cup championship, but I'd been meaning to prop up these hilarious quotes from Boston's Brad Marchand describing the status of Patrice Bergeron for Game 6. In describing Bergeron's readiness to return:

''He was crushing some food.'

and

"He's good. He came back with us and everything so hopefully he can play. He looked really good today. He had a nice suit on, very dashing. Obviously, he's a big part of the team and hopefully he can play."

Crushing food is always a good sign I suppose, but how one looking dashing in a nice suit indicates their readiness for some tough hockey might be tough to say. Chevy seems to think looking dashing in a suit has a lot to do with...well, something.

And if you're a big New Order fan as I am, and even if you're not, you might want to check out this Baywatch music video for "Regret." Please take note of Hasselhoff in the beginning, and the woman reading a magazine spread on New Order. Don't sleep on Peter Hook really getting down on bass either. Take four minutes and watch is all I'm saying.

I'm not saying much.

 

Civic Pride

This has nothing to do with loving your little Honda. They seem to be good, reliable cars though.

Every now and then I plop down on this here blog and opt not to do a nonsensical analysis of whatever-the-hell rife with free association and instead editorialize. Well, if being technical (and I often am nitpickingly so) just about all of blogging is editorializing and, if we (I) want to get more aggravating I could completely disavow the possibility of objectivism and say that any reporting of the facts is still editorializing. But there is a line, editorializing falling on the side of admitting you have an opinion and asserting it. You can say you're trying not to be biased all you want, but hell we all are.

In that bias then, I've got a deep appreciation for the city that has been my home these past four years. So when I stumble upon ancient editorials from visiting "New Yorkers" who have a love for the city, it's a good reminder of the quality of this place. We get a little hung up on asserting that something is better in relation to something else. This is important, there should be standards and there's a need for comparatives, but sometimes, you know, you can say what's good about something, without saying it's better or worse than anything else. When you throw in the comparative, you're giving it credit, probably too much. Leaving it out isn't ignoring it exists, even if someone might then try to argue that that's what you're doing. Chicago is not New York, or LA, or San Francisco. It's sister city to places like Paris and Moscow, which is cool, and Chicago wouldn't be the place it is without all of these other cities existing, but it's still its own beast. And so are they all.

I think my fascination with Chicago is one shared by many, that it has an underdog nature, even though in many ways it's no underdog at all. But that's a moniker it can't really shake despite all of the things that come out of here. And plenty of that is by design: it wants to be seen as working class, even though there's no shortage of extremely wealthy people, no shortage of those in poverty, no shortage then in disparity of wealth. And while for some the "second class" title is the chip on the shoulder, for others it's nothing more than an acknowledgement that that's how we're viewed. Because that's life in general: some people will understand you, some won't, some will hate or love you, and it can be for the understanding or the lack thereof. You can embrace being different without hating people who just want to be the same. It's easy to forget that, for some people, it's just as hard to fit in as to stand out. That not everyone wants to stand out even in our fame hungry nation.

America loves the front-running, free-wheeling style of a New York, the glitz and glamour (seriously, I used the British spelling?) of LA, and they also really love an underdog. People will argue over hot dogs and pizza. I don't eat hot dogs, and I generally prefer east coast pizza. But Chicago's got a lot more than just that, and if I don't like it, I can always move.

New Old Trends

​So the womanfriend and I — probably her first to be fair — have been noting an annoying trend developing in the past, oh three months or so. It might go back longer, but certainly began with the warming of weather which, in Chicago, has undergone several iterations. Anyway, the trend is the playing of music from one's cell phone, i.e. without headphones. Sure I've noted a handful of black train-riders doing this for quite some time, with seemingly no knowledge and definitely no concern that they might be bothering anyone. But there will always be outliers or, if the trend develops, the early adopters. The trend has expanded to include jogging couples (something in me rather dislikes jogging couples to begin with) and the plight of humanity: teenagers.

 

Of course what it represents is a reversion to the days of the boombox, without — again, as the womanfriend put it — the cachet of carrying around a heavy(ish) device. She did not use the word "cachet" because she is not a pompous windbag. I am not always so fortunate. Plus, while boomboxes weren't killing it on the audiophile front, music blasted from your phone sounds even more like utter garbage. I may not want to hear your music anyway, but at least have some damned standards about sound quality! In 80s Cusack terms, it's about like this:

 

 

 

Perhaps the film title might be amended to Text Anything.

 

Another strange trend, or perhaps better branded as business tactic, is when bad restaurants do a redesign. Same bad food in a shiny new package! But I assume they're doing the math, and the large upfront cost of remodeling is somehow more economical that a long sustained cost of better chefs and better ingredients. There's also the fact, I suppose, that with the same dogshit appearance, even if you upgrade your food quality, people won't expect it so long as you have the same dogshit appearance.

 

At any rate, for the time being, that's a wrap.