Chagall’s Four Seasons

Posted on by

Lunch break was long enough on Friday for me to wander over to what’s now known as Chase Tower Plaza, only a few blocks from Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago, and take another look at Marc Chagall’s Four Seasons.

That’s actually a picture I took a few years ago. But the light was about the same, and the mosaic isn’t any different. Some details.
It’s a fine work, though not one of his more famous ones. It’s also late Chagall, since he completed it in 1974. A canopy was added 20 years later, and renovations were done, because by the early 1990s, the Chicago elements had taken a toll.

The Daley Plaza Food Truck Array

Posted on by

On Friday, the court gave us a generous hour and a half for lunch, so I had time to look around the collection of food trucks in downtown Chicago’s Daley Plaza, some of them ‘neath the Chicago Picasso.

The array of trucks was broad. Maybe 15 in all, though I didn’t count.

The one I eventually picked. Had a grilled cheese sandwich a cut above most diners, say, but still a little expensive, I thought.

Jury duty was over late in the afternoon.

It was as if the trucks had never been there.

Jury Duty ’18

Posted on by

Some weeks ago, I got a postcard from the county informing me that I had jury duty. Time: Friday, June 15. Place: the 17th floor of Daley Center in downtown Chicago. So I got up early on Friday, caught a train and arrived ahead of the appointed time, 9:30 a.m.

Jury duty this time around was the same waiting slog it was some years ago. The large waiting room looked exactly the same, with its chairs and tables and a counter behind which the woman in charge of calling the panels spent the day as well. You might call the room design late 20th/early 21st-century nondescript public waiting space.

One small difference from last time: the wireless network name and password were posted on about a half-dozen small signs along the wall. Also, very visible green signs marked the location of electric outlets. There aren’t nearly enough of them.

Five or six panels of maybe 20 people each were called as the day went on, but not mine. I was able to do certain kinds of work: answering emails, deleting debris from my email account and my laptop, downloading picture and audio files, preparing documents to use later — all the sort of things that don’t involve writing. If I’d started a writing project that needed to be finished that day, sure as shooting my panel would have been called.

I also read some Patrick Leigh Fermor’s The Broken Road, the third book about his travels on foot across the now-vanished Europe of the 1930s. That’s a volume I pick up and put down with some regularity. The writing is so erudite and painterly that I read much slower than usual, as if savoring a particularly wonderful piece of chocolate.

Fairly late in the afternoon, the woman behind the counter said, “You’ve done your jury duty. Come collect your checks.” So we did. For our troubles, $17.20, exactly the same as nearly six years ago.

It Was Entirely Possible To Eat, Drink and Be Merry in Logan, Utah in 1980

Posted on by

The beginning of one of the more amusing press release retractions I’ve received recently went as follows:

So very sorry… everyone was rushing to get this one out late yesterday. We all missed it. It should be “20-screen _____ Theatre” and not “20-seat _____ Theatre” … It appears in the fourth paragraph below. I fixed it below. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you, thank you!! –

I got a chuckle at the thought that that particular brand would open a 20-seat theater. Then again, there’s probably a market for an ultra-luxe movie theater with only 20 seats. The kind of place that where four or five attendants, each dressed in posh re-creations of usher and usherette costumes, bring patrons high-end food and beverage at a comfy seat and table facing a high-end digital movie screen.

I have a collection of aged t-shirts that I don’t want to part with. They are mostly too worn for ordinary use, but each reminds of a certain period or trip. Such as this one.

I picked it up in Logan, Utah, during my first visit there in June 1980. I took a bus from San Antonio to Logan that month, and stayed with my high school friend Tom for a while. He was attending Utah State University at that point, and I hadn’t seen him in about a year. A fine visit.

I liked Logan too, with its warm days and cool nights, inexpensive eateries and college town vibe. I visited again in 1982, but not since. Probably best to leave it that way, as a pleasant spot I visited in my youth.

Thursday Crumbs

Posted on by

Not long ago I had a pork cutlet at a Korean restaurant, done in the katsudon style I’ve encountered in Japanese restaurants and at home. This particular cutlet was remarkably large. So much so that I was inspired to take a picture.

Large, but thin, so it wasn’t overfilling. Overall, quite good.

At an Asian grocery store the other day — Asian grocery stores are endlessly interesting — I saw this on offer.

I have to say I’m intrigued. People believe outdoor markets ought to be part of any visit to non-OECD cities, for that all-important authenticity and to see the locals, but if you really want authenticity, grocery stores are the place to go in any country. Ye shall know them by their grocery stores.

More debris from the Saturday grilling and gabfest.

The caps to the bottles I posted the other day, arranged in the same order.

I had a shandy over the weekend and later, during a moment when I had much else to do, naturally decided to look up the word, the story of which I didn’t know. I know more now, after reading this.

Shandy, a shortening of shandygaff, origin obscure. Now that’s a fine word. If I were a brewer, I’d use it for my shandies. Radler is a good word to know too.

Had a curry doughnut today. I don’t eat that many of them, but when I do I enjoy them.

“In Japanese bakeries of virtually every stripe, you can buy a thing called a curry doughnut,” I wrote once upon a time. “What a discovery that was. No part of it is sweet. Browned by frying on the outside, it’s soft on the inside, and a spicy brown curry resides at its core. An enormous amount of fat, I’m sure, and heartburn later on, but boy they’re good going down.

“My favorite spot for curry doughnuts used to be the Cascade Bakery, near the main promenade of Hanshin Station, Umeda, in the heart of Osaka. Even now, I can get one in Arlington Heights, Illinois, if I’m so inclined. I know at least two Japanese bakeries in that town that sell them. But it’s been a while.”

I’ve been to only two Afghan restaurants that I remember. One was in New York City in 2005. The other was ca. 1987 in Chicago: The Helmand.

Writing in 2005, I said: “I can remember visiting an Afghan restaurant only once before, about 20 years ago, a place on the North Side of Chicago near Belmont Blvd., long gone now. Much later I learned that it was owned by relatives of Mohammed [sic] Karzai. I vaguely remember it being exotically good.”

I have a matchbook from the place even now. Can you get matchbooks at restaurants any more? My experience is you can’t. In New York in March I experienced a brief and very minor moment of excitement when I picked up what I though was a small matchbox advertising a restaurant. Matches! Turned out to contain toothpicks.

Whatever happened to Hamid Karzai? Having managed to survive the Afghan presidency, no small thing, he seems to be living in comfortable semi-retirement after his career in peculation.

Space Odyssey

Posted on by

I’m much of my way through reading Space Odyssey by Michael Benson, which was released this year in time for the 50th anniversary of 2001. The book is subtitled “Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece.”

The book doesn’t pretend to be a biography of either Kubrick or Clarke, but a tale of creating the movie, beginning with the extended deliberations by Kubrick about what to do after Dr. Strangelove and the critical ideas Clarke contributed to the genesis and eventual shape of the movie, and taking the story through production, post-production and release, all of which were behind schedule and over budget.

Both Kubrick and Clarke come across as towering intellects, which no doubt they were, but with certain flaws. If he thought it was good for the end product, Kubrick was perfectly willing to take advantage of Clarke or put his actors in danger on the set. For his part, Clarke couldn’t stand up to Kubrick, or say no to a money-sucking leech of a lover, though eventually his association with the project made him wealthy indeed (indirectly, because he had no points in the movie itself).

Since movie-making is such a collaborative effort, a lot of other contributors to the ultimate outcome make appearances in the book. Each is fascinating in his own way, such as the very young man who shot highly kinetic scenes from a helicopter over Scotland, for part of the Star Gate sequence; the mime who choreographed the movements for — and played — the lead ape-man in the Dawn of Man sequence; the designer who built the astonishing centrifuge set; or the stuntman who did the incredibly risky shots of astronaut Poole floating in space.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the movie that the book makes clear is how much of 2001 — a multimillion-dollar project with a large staff — was essentially made up on the fly by Kubrick. A fair number of bad ideas were winnowed out along the way, and good ideas came from various and unexpected sources, all of which the director wasn’t shy about using.

I’ve gotten to the chapter that describes the filming of the Dawn of Man. Reading about that process in detail reminds me of the reaction to the movie by someone I recommended it to years ago (in college in fact). He wasn’t impressed by 2001 or its mystique. Afterward, one of the things he asked me was, “What were those damned monkeys doing?”

Here, Here, Some Beer

Posted on by

Friends were over on Saturday for meat, beer and conversation on the deck, despite rain that morning. By mid-afternoon, the deck was dry enough to sit around.

We had more meat and conversation than beer, though there were a few empty bottles left over afterward, as there have been before. And before that.

I acquired a “flight” of beers before the event at an area grocery store with a beer cave, and these are three of them. As usual, my beer-buying technique was to look for a variety of states and countries of origin, and interesting labels.

Raging Bitch was the hit among the beer names. Its acid-trip Ralph Steadman artwork was remarked upon as well.

A product of the Flying Dog Brewery in Maryland. Later, I read the marketing blarney on the bottle, attributed to Steadman. It’s pretty good:

“Two inflammatory words, one wild drink. Nectar imprisoned in a bottle. Let it out. It is cruel to keep a wild animal locked up. Uncap it. Release it… stand back!! Wallow in its goldenn glow in a glass beneath a white foaming head. Remember, enjoying a RAGING BITCH, unleashed, untamed, unbridled and in heat is pure GONZO!!”

Gonzo, eh? Maybe if you added peyote, which we did not. Otherwise, it was reportedly  a pleasant brew.

Voodoo Ranger, by New Belgium Brewing of Colorado and North Carolina, had another amusing label.
It didn’t assert its gonzo-ness. The label did say, “Brilliantly balanced for easy drinking, this pale ale is packed with citrus and tropical fruit flavors from eight different hop varieties.”

The center beer, PilsnerUrquell from Plzeň (Pilsen), Czech Republic, had the most conventional label, appealing to a drinker’s sense of tradition. The label said:

“In 1842, the Citizen’s Brewery of Plzeň brewed the world’s first golden pilsner and never stopped. We make it in the same way in the same place, with 100% of our ingridients from the same farming regions in Czech, as always.”

Not pictured is the grapefruit shandy that I tried, which a guest brought. It went down well, but in combo with meat and another bottle of beer, I later had a rare but fortunately fleeting bout of indigestion. I’d say it was worth it, though.

They Might Be Serious About This Burger Thing

Posted on by

Today I encountered the strangest press release I’ve seen in a long time, and I’ve seen a few odd ones over the years. Normally, press releases purposely avoid eccentricity of any kind. Sometimes there are as dull as can be. But not always. Especially in this case. It starts off:

BURGER, Calif., June 11, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Today, IHOP® Restaurants announces that it is going by a new name – IHOb. For burgers…

Turns out it’s a temporary “name change.” IHOP wants to add a little oomph to its effort to compete in the crowded field of hamburgers in America.

The change, in fact, celebrates the debut of the brand’s new Ultimate Steakburgers, a line-up of seven mouth-watering, all-natural burgers…. According to a company spokesburger, “These burgers are so burgerin’ good, we re-burgered our name to the International House of Burgers!”

That isn’t even the strange part. The third, fourth and fifth paragraphs of the release are, and I quote exactly as they appear:

Also, burgers burgers burgers. Burgerin’ burgers burgers. Reburgered burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers. Burger burgerings burgers burgers burgers. Burgerin’ burgers burgers. Moreover, burgers burgered burgers burgers. Burgers burgers burgerin’ burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgerin’ burgers.

Furthermore, burgers burgers burgers. Burgerin’ burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgers burgerin’ burgers burgers! Burgers burgers burgers reburgered burgers burgers burgers burgering burgers. Not to mention, burgers burgered burgers burgered. Burgers, burgers, burgerin’ burgers and burger burgers.

Lastly, burgers burgers #burgers. Reburgered burgers burgers burgered burgers burgered burger burgers. Burgers burgers burgers?

Hats at Greenfield Village, 2010

Posted on by

It’s been eight years since we took a short trip to the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in suburban Detroit. I was looking at the images I made during that visit recently and was reminded that hats played a part.

Such as the Hello Kitty cap, probably bought in Japan, and probably around the house even now. In the background is Greenfield Village’s Herschell-Spillman Carousel, which the girls were waiting to ride.

The museum says, ” Built in 1913, this ‘menagerie’ carousel’s hand-carved animals include storks, goats, zebras, dogs, and even a frog. Although its original location is uncertain, this carousel operated in Spokane, Washington, from 1923 to 1961.”

This colorful cap is definitely still around the house.

I bought it from a street vendor in Bangkok for a few baht and wore it frequently in the tropics, less frequently in the hot sun of temperate summers. The day we visited the Henry Ford, if I remember right, was fairly hot and Lilly must have borrowed the cap from me.

One of the many 19th-century retailers moved to the site of Greenfield Village was a hat shop, where you could try on hats.

Just women’s hats, I think. If there had been a men’s bowler available, say, I would have tried it on.

Allerton Park Statues

Posted on by

Below is an example, which I chanced across recently, of something you stop reading after only a moment. Full stop, no need to go on, or ever to think about the subject again.

Ever wonder what Daphne and Velma were up to before they met Scooby-Doo and the rest of the Mystery, Inc. gang? A new live-action…

Besides gardens, the Robert Allerton Park & Retreat Center features a number of sculptures. About 100 these days, I’ve read. Robert Allerton collected them, and when he owned the property, there were many more.

Still on display in the Walled Garden is “Girl With a Scarf,” by Lili Auer.

Near the Allerton manse are a number of works, such as this sphinx-like limestone piece, one of two near each other, created by John Joseph Borie III, the architect who designed the house.

It doesn’t count as sculpture, but nearby is a koi pond.

A little further from the house is this figure, about which I have no information.
Out on a tall pedestal between the Bulb Garden and the Peony Garden is a copy of Auguste Rodin’s “Adam.”
Further along is a place called the Avenue of the Chinese Musicians. It is an odd place.

Allerton bought the statues in England long ago.
Given the size of Allerton Park, there are plenty of other places and artworks scattered around that we didn’t get to, some with evocative names, such as Fu Dog Garden, House of the Golden Buddhas, the Sun Singer and the Death of the Last Centaur. Maybe next time.