Update: Gabuttø Burger is closed. At least the one in Rolling Meadows is, which used to be the only location. Maybe I should have mentioned that before, since we found that out one day in November (I think) when we dropped by for its fine sort-of-Japanese burgers and found it locked.
So the Yelpers are right. The place wasn’t a victim of the pandemic, though at times I wonder which of our favorite non-chain restaurants will not emerge from their current retail comas. On the other hand, a restaurant is always a high-wire act. No matter how good a joint is, it can still be the victim of regular retail churn.
Gone from Rolling Meadows, but Gabuttø Burger was planning to re-open in Elgin. Not as convenient for us, but we still would have gone occasionally. Unfortunately, word was it was supposed to open in March. I suspect that didn’t go too well.
I never did take a picture of one of its burgers. One time, however, I did take a picture at the Rolling Meadows Gabuttø Burger — of something arrayed like I’d never seen before. More valuable than the restaurant or I realized at the time. I hope the proprietors remembered to take the supply of paper with them when they left.
Speaking of retail in peril, what about the fate of Buc-ee’s? If there ever was a place that encouraged the opposite of social distancing — that would be social cramming? — it would be Buc-ee’s, with its mass crowds in its massive stores. Then again, such is the pull of Buc-ee’s that maybe it’s been deemed an essential operation in Texas.
I go off on tangents fairly easily, but then again they’re about the only trips you can take these days. I had a good one yesterday evening, after work and after dinner and after our walk. A discussion some time ago about writing good headlines inspired me to think about a half-remembered list in The Book of Lists, which I pull off the shelf every few years. Specifically, Dr. Demento’s 10 Worst Song Titles of All Time.
I checked. It’s on p. 178. Back when I originally owned the book, in the late 1970s, you’d read such a list, be amused, and that was that. You might hear one of the songs on the list on Dr. Demento, if you listened to the show. I wasn’t a regular listener back then, though I did hear it sporadically — often enough to hear the likes of “Fish Heads,” but never anything on the list that I remember.
So I decided, true to form when on a tangent, to look more closely at some of those bad song titles, at least in Dr. Demento’s opinion (a list he created for The Book of Lists). I toyed with the idea of reposting all of the titles here, but most of the 10 titles are pretty long, and I didn’t feel like all that transcription, so I looked to see if they were posted elsewhere on line. As far as I can tell, there are other versions online, such as this one, that certainly features some bad song titles, but none of them are on ’70s list in The Book of Lists.
Or this list, which claims to be a ’90s version of the original, but has only one title in common with it: “How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I’ve Been A Liar All My Life.”
In our time, you can go to YouTube and see most if not all of the bad-title songs, such as “How Could You Believe Me…,” which I have to say hasn’t aged that well.
So I picked a few of the songs from the ’70s list and looked them up. Such as “Would You Rather Be a Colonel With An Eagle On Your Shoulder Or A Private With A Chicken On Your Knee?” That might count as a bad title, but it sure is amusing.
I was happy to find that it was a WWI song, recorded by Arthur Fields but also sung by Eddie Cantor. If I’m not mistaken, the “chicken” in the title had an innocent connotation in referring to flirtatious French girls, but also a less-innocent connotation for those in the know, referring to French prostitutes.
Next: “I’ve Got Those Wake Up 7:30, Wash Your Ears They’re Dirty, Eat Your Eggs and Oatmeal, Rush to School Blues,” a novelty song recorded by Jimmy Boyd in 1953.
Hm. Couldn’t place Boyd until I read he did the first recording of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” the year before. Ah, that singer. Popularized a song that will not die. Boyd had his heyday as a boy singer, but didn’t have much of a career later — or didn’t want one, hard to say. Anyway, here’s the song.
I decided to look up one more from the ’70s list, three out of 10 being enough for now: “A Woman is Only a Woman, But a Cigar is a Good Smoke.” That was a song title? In college (I think) I told someone that Freud had said that. Maybe I believed that myself. Thought it was a quip from Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, though that’s a work I’ve never read nor even lightly grazed.
But no: it’s from Kipling. From a spot of late Victorian comic verse. In 1905, tunesmiths Harry Smith and Victor Herbert wrote a song called “A Good Cigar is a Smoke,” so perhaps Dr. Demento didn’t quite get the title right, though one of the lines in the song is, “For a woman is only a woman, my boy, but a good cigar is a smoke.”
You know, I ought to claim that Smith and Herbert actually just translated the song from German. Sigmund Freud wrote it and included it Jokes, which was published in 1905, same year as the English version of the song. Mere coincidence?
The tangent trip isn’t over yet. Just getting to the best part. After I listened to “A Good Cigar is a Smoke,” the YouTube algorithm suggested “Ashokan Farewell.” Pretty song. I hadn’t heard that in a good while, so I listened to it. Then the usually dense algorithm suggested this.
“Wayfaring Stranger” performed by Hayde Bluegrass Orchestra. A Norwegian band, of all things. Wow.
Another Sunday, another longish walk with the dog. Yesterday, with all the snow melted and the sun overhead, we went to Mallard Lake, which is part of the Forest Preserve District of Du Page County.
Considering the time of the year, it didn’t look so much different from this visit. One difference was the number of people. With fewer out-of-house diversions now, people seem to be visiting parks and forest preserves more than before. A fair number of them came to fish, while others like us had their dogs along, or were just out taking a walk. Even so, there was plenty of room to keep at a good distance from everyone else.
The entrance is on Schick Road. I marked the entrance with a red diamond.
From there we drove to the parking lot, circled in red. Then walked clockwise on the white path (gravel) around Mallard Lake, 1-2-3. A mile, maybe. Between 1 and 2 are two small islands connected by footbridges, and the rest of the path partly hugs the shore.
Nice walk, except for a while the wind kicked up and blew across the still-cold lake, dropping temps a good deal. Without much wind, it was an early spring day; with the wind, it was a late winter day.
Enough already, I cried to the heavens. Not really. It was more of a mutter. Yet I seemed to get an answer, because the snow melted by Saturday and today we enjoyed a fine spring day.
I even heard people out mowing their grass this morning. The flush of spring hasn’t quite inspired me to yard work, however.
Two years ago, when I spent about a day and a half in Amarillo, I took a walk along Sixth Ave. the evening I arrived. It has the distinction of being part of U.S. 66 at one time.
“The U.S. Route 66-Sixth Street Historic District comprises 13 blocks of commercial development in the San Jacinto Heights Addition west of Amarillo’s central business district,” the NPS says. ” Developed as an early 20th-century streetcar suburb, the district was transformed by the establishment of a national transportation artery running through its center.
“The U.S. Route 66-Sixth Street Historic District is Amarillo’s most intact collection of commercial buildings that possess significant associations with the highway. Featuring elements of Spanish Revival, Art Deco, and Art Moderne design, these buildings represent the historic development phases of this early 20th century suburb and the evolving tastes and sensibilities of American culture.”
I’d read about the street, but more importantly at that moment, I was looking for something to eat. I didn’t find anyplace I wanted to eat, but I did see some of the historic buildings on the street. I was inspired to take a picture of only one of them. A detail of one of them.Skulls. They’re on a wall of the 6th Street Massacre Haunted House. Note also the plaque. It says that the building is on the National Registry of Historic Places. This is a wider view.
It was once the Rex Theatre, which opened in 1935 and lasted until 1956 as a movie venue. It’s a little hard to see it as a theater building from Sixth Ave. The view around the corner shows it better.
A movie palace, it probably wasn’t. Just a neighborhood picture show. I think that makes it just as interesting, historically speaking, as one of the palaces, but not as nice to look at.
Usually it’s bad to brag about your ignorance, but there are exceptions. I didn’t know this until recently and I’m not sorry. It’s an example of the ridiculousness I miss by not paying attention to social media memes. That is, by not being one of the callow youth who use social media as the thin straw through which they obtain all their information, a practice that surely stunts their brains.
Speaking of callow youth, when I was a child I thought the prestigious journalism award was the Pulit Surprise. When I typed that out, I laughed at the thought of it. Then again, it might be a surprise to some of the recipients.
As mentioned yesterday, we’re watching more movies than before. Toward the end of March, I discovered an bunch of pre-WWII Universal horror pics on demand, and we watched those first. In order: Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolf Man and The Invisible Man. All first times for Ann, but not me, except I couldn’t remember whether I’d seen The Invisible Man, though I read the book years ago.
Ann said she enjoyed all of them, but The Invisible Man most. The main character wasn’t just a murderous psycho, he was also positively playful while committing less-harmful pranks, she noted, which humanized him a bit.
Since then, our viewing has been less thematic. Along with the aforementioned Groundhog Day, we’ve watched Intolerable Cruelty (a lesser Coen Bros. effort, but not bad), The Terminator, Space Jam and The Death of Stalin.
We also watched an oddity called John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch, which is as long as a short movie, but more like a TV special, which I believe it was. As a pseudo-kids show, it had many entertaining moments, and on the whole was slightly demented, like Mulaney’s comedy.
Some silly verse I wrote last year. My entire output of verse of any kind for the year. I’d forgotten about it until the other day.
Blake was a flake, and
Shelley ended up in a lake.
Byron was mad, bad and a cheater, while
Coleridge was a lotus-eater.
Wordsworth really liked his abbey, and
Keats’ odes were none too shabby.
In doggerel about poets Romantic,
Best not to wax too pedantic.
Woke up to a light blanket of snow this morning that slowly melted as the day wore on. Still cold out there. Sheltering in place is better when you can spend time outside comfortably, but the weather doesn’t care about merely human concerns.
Beginning in mid-March, at Ann’s request, we’ve been watching more TV shows and movies together than we usually do. As an old-timer, one of the shows I’ve suggested is the original Star Trek which, remarkably, she’s enjoying a lot, though only two episodes so far.
She likes them, she says, because they’re fun. Many more recent shows are too serious. So I think she’s taking them in the right spirit, which is to say, as entertainment. She also commented that the character dynamic between Kirk and Spock is particularly strong, which of course it is.
The two episodes we’ve watched so far are “Mirror, Mirror” and “Devil in the Dark” (last year sometime, we also watched “The City on the Edge of Forever” and “The Trouble With Tribbles”). They are all particular favorites of mine, so I recommended them. Who doesn’t like Spock with a beard?
As for “Devil in the Dark,” it has a special place in my recollections. It’s a solid episode, but that’s not it. In 1973, a San Antonio station started showing Star Trek in the afternoons, part of the cascade of reruns that kept the franchise alive, though no one would have put it that way then. I was in junior high, the perfect age to start watching Star Trek. The first episode the station aired, for whatever reason — such inattention to correct order would probably outrage fanboys these days — was “Devil in the Dark.”
Another Easter activity of ours: a long walk. Lots of people can say that. The pandemic has done more for getting people out on the sidewalks than anything I can think of, at least here in a suburb that has sidewalks.
Easter Sunday happened to be warmish this year, especially when compared to Easter Monday. By late in the evening on Monday, it was already down around freezing, headed for a morning low today of 28 F. Bah.
At about noon today, there was snow. At least it didn’t last long and it didn’t stick.
Back to Sunday. In the afternoon, we went to the Arthur L. Janura Forest Preserve, also known as the Poplar Creek Forest Preserve. All of us, including the dog.
That’s only one section of a much larger property, which is part of the Cook County Forest Preserve District. Fortunately the state hasn’t ordered such places closed, though various events in the district have been cancelled. Such an order would be nonsensical, considering how much social distancing you can do in such a large expanse, but some jurisdictions don’t seem to have much sense.
A modified version of the map.
We walked from the parking lot (circled in red) along the paved path (in white) until we got roughly to where I’ve put a red octagon. From there, we headed overland to the banks of Poplar Creek (the next octagon) and then followed the creek along its curve, reaching roughly the position of the third octagon. We returned more or less the same way. Looks long, but I don’t think the walk was more than a mile and a half round trip.
There on Poplar Creek, it’s hard to believe you’re in a metro area of 9 million or so — except for the traffic on Golf Road. Not visible, but audible, even if the sound is a little diminished in these pandemic days. The creek, fairly full from spring rain, gurgled along.
Poplar Creek is a tributary, ultimately, of the Fox River, which feeds the Illinois River. That in turn flows to the Mississippi. So the water we saw was destined, mostly, for that mighty river and the far-away Gulf.
The route was muddy and sometimes strewn with fallen branches and rocks. The grass and weeds and other foot-level plants are greening nicely, while the trees and bushes are getting their start, but haven’t caught up yet.
I think dog thoroughly enjoyed her walk, tramping through the mud, sniffing everything she could, and chewing on blades of grass when we paused. We didn’t have such a bad time either, momentarily away from shelter in place.
Had a “it’s that guy” moment on Easter evening when watching Groundhog Day. Ann wanted to see it since she hadn’t before, but had heard of it. Yuriko and I hardly minded seeing it again, third time maybe over the last 25 years, since it’s a movie of such charm.
Fairly early in the movie, Bill Murray’s character has an appointment with a psychiatrist. It’s a small part, since I don’t think the psychiatrist appears again, unlike many of the other townsfolk. As soon as I saw him, I thought — it’s that guy in Lodge 49, an entertaining series I’m watching about once a week (the best way to do it). Only he’s close to 30 years younger.
So it was: David Pasquesi, who plays a lodge member who has an actual interest in alchemy, unlike most of the rest of the members. Like most character actors, his list of credits mostly includes titles I’ve never seen, or even heard of in a lot of cases. Does good work on Lodge 49, though.
Curiously enough, that isn’t the only overlap. Brian Doyle-Murray, who also had a small part in Groundhog Day, is a recurring character on Lodge 49.
Something new on the Weather Underground forecast page for my area this Maundy Thursday morning. A screen shot:
Obviously a day to stay in if you can, for a number of reasons. Back to posting on Easter Monday. A good Easter to all.
There are many oddities around the house. Why have it any other way? Such as a Piggly Wiggly sewing kit, or you could call it a needle kit. Scanned here open, with the back on the left and the front on the right. Or reverse and observe.
Inside the kit. Some needles still in place. A threader, too.My guess is that my grandmother picked it up at a San Antonio Piggly Wiggly in the 1950s, early ’60s at the latest. Most of the time I believe she shopped at the nearby Handy-Andy in Alamo Heights, but she must have occasionally patronized Piggly Wiggly, which existed in South Texas at the time (but no more: HEB is king in that part of the country).
At some point, maybe after grandma died, my mother removed it to her house; and now that’s what I’ve done. I can date it with some certainty to that decade because of a few details. Green Stamps don’t narrow it down that much, since they were around from the 1930s to the ’80s, but I smile at the mention of them anyway.
On the inside it says: Frank Kraus, Los Angeles 36, which puts it before zip codes and during postal zones (1943-63). Since the kit was made in West Germany, that puts it after the war, in fact after the formation of the BRD in 1949. Must have been a product of the postwar recovery, when West German industry was making whatever they could for whomever they could, just as Japanese industry did at the time.
As for Frank Kraus, I’d guess he was the importer. Possibly, but only possibly, this fellow. Or him, though he left California at some point. A little looking around, such as at Esty, reveals that Frank Kraus, whoever he was and wherever he rests now, had his name on other small sewing kits from West Germany.
Yesterday evening, rain was forecast possible and clouds rolled along.
Temps were a pleasant 70 F. or so. I sat on the deck and waited for the rain. Mostly I saw cloud-to-cloud lightning a few miles away to the south, which has a fascination all its own. It was never near enough to drive me inside, and not much rain came either by dark.
Today was a different story. Just before 5 p.m., heavy rain started to fall. With some hail. Luckily not too large, but enough to make a tink! sound when it hit a metal yard ornament in our front yard. Hail, or at least its streaks, is visible against the backdrop of a neighbor’s house.
When I was 11 or 12, golfball-sized hail fell as I watched from our kitchen window. The ice slammed into the yard and bounced every which way. It was over in two minutes. A minute? Not long, but impressive. I collected a few and kept them in the freezer until they merged with the other frost. It was Texas hail. You know, bigger like everything else.
More valuable than the restaurant or I realized at the time. I hope the proprietors remembered to take the supply of paper with them when they left.
Then again, such is the pull of Buc-ee’s that maybe it’s been deemed an essential operation in Texas.
My guess is that my grandmother picked it up at a San Antonio Piggly Wiggly in the 1950s, early ’60s at the latest. Most of the time I believe she shopped at the nearby Handy-Andy in Alamo Heights, but she must have occasionally patronized Piggly Wiggly, which existed in South Texas at the time (but no more: HEB is king in that part of the country).
