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How the Whos Really Dealt With the Grinch

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Ann and I decided to watch one of this year’s airings of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! last night, which, except for the commercials interrupting in places not originally intended for that purpose, was worth a watch, as always. I may or may not have seen the show on December 18, 1966, when it first aired, but I did watch it most years during the early ’70s, and occasionally since then.

This time it occurred to me just how forgiving the Whos really were. Not only did they welcome Christmas with song despite having no presents or toys (and no food), when the Grinch returned all of that, they didn’t toss him in the Whoville jail for burglary.

Or worse. Naturally, I had to come up with an alternate ending.

The Whos organized a posse with care
And tracked the Grinch down near his lair.
You’ve stolen our presents, from largest to least,
You’ve grabbed our Who pudding, and glommed our roast beast.
They hit him hard in the name of their town,
They kicked his shins and knocked him down.
And without a word or even a sniff
The Who posse tossed the Grinch over the cliff.

Recent Bumper Sticker Sightings

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Next year’s election is all still talk, though more strangely entertaining than most year-before politicking. Hints of it are appearing outside the chattering classes, though.

Spotted a 2016 political bumper sticker the other day, one advocating the candidacy of the junior Senator from Texas. I’d guess his supporters are a little thin on the ground here in Illinois, but there have to be some. I’ve seen more stickers around here late this year supporting the Senate’s token socialist.

Another sticker on the same car said Marriage = Man Outline + Woman Outline, which might have been there awhile, growing ever more quixotic. Also, a sticker indicated that the owner used to be a Marine. And finally, one urged GO VEGAN. Make what you will of all that.

An El Niño Winter?

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Some years, December comes in with the kind of snow we had before Thanksgiving. This year, rain as November ended and December began. El Niño?

I can’t pretend to understand exactly how that works, but I do defer to NOAA on the matter of the impact of El Niño on North America: “Seasonal outlooks generally favor below-average temperatures and above-median precipitation across the southern tier of the United States, and above-average temperatures and below-median precipitation over the northern tier of the United States.”

As a northern-tier location, so far we haven’t had below-median precipitation, but it has been warmer than usual. Suits me.

Other marks of the season, recently spotted in the neighborhood, include creeping Christmas lights. They started appearing just before Thanksgiving and have accelerated since. I expect a rush to put them up next weekend. The neighbors across the street have them up already. A few blocks away, someone did the full Griswold on their house, as a few people do: hundreds of lights everywhere, inflatables, glowing Santas, reindeer, elves, “Nutcracker Suite” characters, and a Nativity setup that might be visible from space.

It’s enough so far that I brought the lights in from the garage, for testing. That makes me ask all over again, how can simple strings become so tangled? Also, three of the four strings lit again after 11 months or so. One did not wake up, like the woman astronaut in the original Planet of the Apes.

Thanksgiving & The Days After ’15

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On the whole, Thanksgiving outside was gray and rainy, but pleasantly warm for this time of the year. The days afterward were drier but much chillier, though not quite freezing.

Pictured: an all-too-common meal snapshot, in this case most of my Thanksgiving dinner. Note the artless presentation. I did that myself. I don’t remember what the plastic fork was doing there, but I will assert that we used metal utensils.
Thanksgiving chow '15The ham came from a warehouse store, while Lilly prepared the various starches, with Ann’s assistance. She combined four or five different cheeses for the macaroni and cheese. It isn’t Thanksgiving without that, she said, and it was the star attraction of the plate. For those who fret about such things, there was a green item on the menu, too: green beans, which didn’t make into the picture, but did make it into my stomach.

Once again, Martinelli’s sparkling cider was the main drink — original and cranberry/apple — though we also opened a bottle of wine we bought at a winery near Traverse City in 2007. I’d post the name of the wine, but that would involve going out to the refrigerator in the garage, where it’s now stored, and reading the label. It was a pretty good Riesling.

Some people shop on the Friday after Thanksgiving. That’s never been my ambition. My ambition is to do as close to nothing that day as possible. Days like that are very rare. This year I almost achieved it. Almost, but not quite.

Which reminds me of this exchange in Office Space.

Michael Bolton: You were supposed to come in on Saturday. What were you doing?

Peter Gibbons: Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.

On Saturday, we watched Vancouver Asahi, a Japanese movie on TV about the baseball team of that name, composed of Japanese-Canadian players during its heyday in the 1930s, when there used to be a Japantown in Vancouver. Not bad on the whole, though about 30 minutes too long. It also had the virtue of being about something I’d never heard of before.

After the movie ended, at about 11:30 in the evening, I went out on the deck and could see Orion to the south, parading across a nice clear sky. Never mind the solstice. Winter’s here.

Greater Tuna at Ford’s Theatre

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Will Reagan-era Washington DC ever evoke the kind of nostalgia New York of various decades does, or London of the ’60s, or the once-removed nostalgia for Paris or Berlin of the ’20s? The Americans doesn’t really trade on nostalgia for the time, even though it’s set then. Who knows?

All I know is that I visited DC a number of times during the mid-1980s. During a late ’86 visit, I went to Ford’s Theatre for a performance of Greater Tuna.

FordsTheatreI don’t remember a lot about Greater Tuna, except that it was a somewhat dark, two-man farce about a fictional small town in Texas. According to Samuel French, which licenses the play, Greater Tuna was originally produced in 1981 in Austin by its authors, Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard. The play’s stars, Williams and Sears, played all 20 characters, and Howard directed.

Greater Tuna was first presented Off Broadway at Circle in the Square in New York City on October 21, 1982. It ran for over a year Off Broadway, and “went on to tour major theatres all over America and spots overseas for the next 30 some years, and became one of the most produced plays in American theatre history,” notes Samuel French.

I think Joe Sears and Jaston Williams were still the two men doing all the parts in 1986, but I wouldn’t swear to it. All I have left is a ticket stub and a recollection of it being entertaining.

Ford’s Theatre, of course, has a doleful history of its own. The president’s box is still draped with flags, though it’s actually a 1960s reconstruction of the original, as is the entire theater space, with more changes made in a 2008 renovation. During the most recent renovation, the Washington Post ran an article containing a brief history of the place:

“Ford’s Theatre was a Baptist church until it was taken over in 1861 by entrepreneur John T. Ford. The venue was destroyed by fire the night of Dec. 30, 1862, but was rebuilt and reopened in 1863.

“After the assassination… when Ford sought to reopen for business, there was a public outcry. The government bought the theater from Ford and used it over the years as a museum and as an office and storage building.

“On the morning of June 9, 1893, the building was packed with 500 government clerks, occupying several floors of jury-rigged office space, when the interior collapsed, according to a Washington Post account the next day. Scores were killed and injured, and the theater’s already altered interior was destroyed.

The government rebuilt it again — and again used the building for storage. In the 1950s, the government decided to restore the building as a historic site and theater venue, and Ford’s reopened in 1968.”

It just occurred to me that I’ve visited three of the four sites of presidential assassinations: Ford’s Theatre, the National Gallery of Art’s West Building (built on the site of Baltimore & Potomac Railroad station where President Garfield was shot, though unmarked), and the Texas School Book Depository building. Guess that means I need to visit Buffalo.

More Moo Goo Gai Pan

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Back again on November 29. A good Thanksgiving to all. The snow, which has been melting all day, ought to be gone by then, leaving cold mud. But snow will be back before long. Never mind the snows of yesteryear. There’s always plenty more this year.

Sand, as I’ve noted before, is good for adding traction to icy driveways and sidewalks. Something I’ve learned this year: playground sand isn’t what you want. At freezing temps it tents to stick together, which makes for lousy spreading. Tube sand, which I’ve long used, is the thing.

It’s been 40 years since the original broadcast of “Over the River and Through the Woods,” the episode of The Bob Newhart Show in which Emily’s out of town for Thanksgiving, so Bob spends the holiday with Howard and Jerry and Mr. Carlin watching a football game. They get blotto and order an excess of Moo Goo Gai Pan from a Chinese restaurant.

How much pretend-drunk comedy is there now? Not much, I think, though I don’t spend a lot of time watching sitcoms any more. I’ll leave it to others to tease out the social implications of that. It’s enough for me to note that there’s no equivalent of Foster Brooks on prime time that I know of. Then again, there’s not really any such thing as prime time any more.

Lilly at 18

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It’s that time of year again.

Cake!Why the green flower? she asked. I’d had a green, yellow and red flower put into the design. I made up a metaphor on the spot: the traffic light metaphor of life. Some things you should absolutely do: green. Some things absolutely not: red. Some things you need to use your judgment and take into account circumstance and so on: yellow.

We added candles to the cake. The string of candles Lilly’s holding.

Ann & Lilly 11.19.15The string was made of some kind of flash paper. When you lit one end, the paper would be consumed quickly, leaving all of the candles burning. Nice effect.

Post-Thanksgiving Days of a Previous Decade

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Sunday, Nov 22, 2015

Most years the first snow’s a light dusting, but this year full-blown winter precipitation started falling late on Friday and well into Saturday, leaving us with about a foot of wet, heavy snow. Wet probably because it was barely cold enough to freeze, but it did stick to every tree and bush. Turns out the official amount on Saturday — 11.2 inches at O’Hare, where the NWS takes its Chicago-area measurement — was the most for a November snowfall since 1895.

Nov 21, 2015Friday, Nov 24, 2006

Another major holiday come and gone. Now it’s Buy Nothing Day. So far, I’ve bought nothing today, unless you count electricity, natural gas, phone service, etc. I don’t think even the most dyed-in-the-wool believer in the “America as World Pig” model of global economics would shut off his utilities for the day after Thanksgiving.

I’m no purist when it comes to Buy Nothing Day, since I have a strong suspicion I’m going to invest in fried poultry in a few hours, to feed the whelps and my nephew Sam, who’s visiting from Cincinnati. No whelp he, since he’s 23.

Yesterday’s feast was reasonably conventional: big bird, smashed spuds, various breads, even that all-North American berry, cranberries. The only peculiarities involved Sam, who is peculiar in his eating habits and ate a species of Polish sausage instead of bird meat; and our choice of dessert: a pie of no sort, but instead cream puffs.

Lilly, who just turned 9, ate as heartily as the rest of us, but at about 9 pm last night threw everything up in the vicinity of the downstairs toilet. No one else here was afflicted in the same way, not yet. Such are the stuff of special holiday memories. She felt better this morning, fortunately. [But the virus wasn’t through with us.]

Wednesday, Nov 29, 2006

Early this morning, after I’d woken up once to hear the rain on the roof, I returned to the imaginal realm and dreamed of flying – not too common a variety of dream for me, but it happens occasionally. Flying as if I were a kite, tethered to a moving train far, far below through a broad prairie landscape. That was only a part of an elaborate, vivid dream, the likes of which I only have a few times a year. I have plenty of other dreams, of course, pleasant or anxious, but more pedestrian. (The Japanese verb associated with dreaming translates as “see.” I like that. I saw a dream last night.)

Friday, Dec 1, 2006

A foot of snow today, and you’d think that would quiet things down outside. It did, for a while, since the blanket of snow muffled the streets and closed the airports beginning a little after midnight. I was up briefly at 3 am or so and wished I could leave the windows open, since the traffic noise was gone. But as soon as the sun came up this morning, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr went the snowblowers. And traffic started again.

Wicker Park Details

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There’s a junction of three major streets in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago at North, Damen and Milwaukee avenues that (I’ve read) is being called Six Corners, to the consternation of those who believe that the junction of Irving Park Road and Cicero and Milwaukee avenues is the true Six Corners. I will note that the Irving Park-Cicero-Milwaukee Six Corners has been called that a lot longer than the North-Damen-Milwaukee Six Corners, but otherwise I don’t have a dog in that fight. Time will sort it out.

Near the North-Damen-Milwaukee intersection on Saturday I walked into a fire hydrant. The bruise on my right leg is still a little sore, but at least I didn’t tumble to the sidewalk. I wasn’t paying attention to the sidewalk, a foolish thing to do, because I was looking at some of the nearby buildings. Such as the former Noel State Bank, now a Walgreens at 1601 N. Milwaukee Ave.

Wicker Park, Nov 14, 2015The outside is stately (bankly?), but the interior — despite being a chain drug store — is gorgeous. A fine adaptive re-use that had a good design to work with.

At 1579 N Milwaukee Ave., is Chicago’s Flat Iron Building, which still seems to be an artists colony, in spite of articles saying that the gentrification of the neighborhood doomed that use.
Wicker Park, Nov 14, 2015This is 1954 W North Ave., a handsome building. Or buildings, it looks like two structures flush against each other, but I’m not sure.
Wicker Park, Nov 14, 2015From the vantage point of the Damen El Station platform, I took a look at the building that’s home to the Double Door, a well-known music venue in Wicker Park. I went there once ca. 1996 to see — who? The singer was a woman, and she spent part of the show bad-mouthing Tori Amos, for some reason; that’s what I remember.
Double DoorSeemed like an ordinary enough building-top. Then I noticed something a little odd.
T*REXSomeone has written T*REX! T*REX! T*REX! … near the top. Presumably from the roof. But why? An enthusiast for the band of that name? Or the prehistoric creature?

Return to Humboldt Park

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Another place we went on Saturday — which I suspect will be the last warm Saturday of the year — was Humboldt Park, one of Chicago’s major parks. The last time I was there, summer was ending, but it was still summer. In mid-November, the park’s a different place, one of autumnal gray and brown and smidgens of green.

Humboldt Park Nov 14, 2105There are still a lot of birds around. Ducks and geese mostly, still foraging in the unfrozen waters.

Humboldt Park Nov 14, 2105Near the park’s Boat House is a dead tree refashioned into artwork: “Burst” by Mia Capodilupo (2014). A ex-locust tree plus hose, rope, extension cord, and fabric.

Humboldt Park Nov 14, 2105According to WTTW, it’s one of a number of such transformations citywide: “The Chicago Park District has teamed with a local sculptor’s group to turn trees that were condemned into public art. The stay of execution for the mighty elms, ash and locust trees is also an opportunity for artists to make a very public impression.”

Not far from “Burst” is a more traditional kind of park art, a statue of explorer Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt. I saw it last year but couldn’t make an image.

Felix Gorling did thisNote the globe behind him. There’s an iguana back there, too. WBEZ reports: “[Humboldt Park] was laid out in 1869. The statue arrived in 1892, the work of Felix Görling. It was paid for by German-born brewer Francis Dewes, who was also responsible for a flamboyant mansion on Wrightwood Avenue.

“When the statue was erected, the neighborhood around it was heavily German. The Poles later settled in, and for many years Humboldt Park was the site of the Polish Constitution Day Parade. Then the Poles moved on and were succeeded by the Puerto Ricans… One of the park’s roadways is now named for Luis Munoz Marin — the first elected governor of Puerto Rico.”