FuzzyCo

The Hot Kid by Elmore Leonard

The Hot Kid exists at the intersection of Westerns (it's set in Oklahoma), gangster stories (it's the 30s), and true-crime fiction (in a touch of meta, one of the characters writes for those sorts of magazines). And it's unmistakably Elmore Leonard. Yes, please.

The last time I shot the Soiree DADA show something just felt right about doing so with a disposable film camera. This last weekend I saw the show again and I thought I'd just get a few shots with my lil' Sony U30 and darned if it didn't start to freak out. So I got a few shots I actually like and quite a few that have been 'enhanced' with lovely purple lines. I went ahead and posted them anyway, because, heck, DADA!

We got this sometime ago, but I don't think I've shared it yet: Joe Alterio has a project called Robots and Monsters: A Charitable Menagerie. You make a donation to a charity and then specify a robot or monster (or robot monster) with three words and you get an original drawing. Above is a 'Fuzzy' 'Midget' 'Busdriver'. It's Team Gerdes in a single drawing!

And in the same vein, Adam "Apelad" Koford has (had?) a deal where for $20 you could get an original monkey illustration to your specifications. Above is the Monkey Midget Busdriver. Monkeys are, already, smaller than the average busdriver, but I think he's even smaller than that. $20 can also get you an original Laugh Out Loud Cat cartoon, and if that's not a great deal, I don't know what is.

Last night I presented Erica with a framed version of this triptych. Best viewed large. I'm not sure any explanation would do the piece justice, so I'll just let it speak for itself.

Kate has an illustration in an alphabetical group show at the Chesterton Art Center in Chesterton, Indiana and you can bid to purchase her contribution (seen above) through some complicated mechanism called "going there" or "calling".

I'm running the Chicago Marathon tomorrow. If you'd like to track my progress from afar, my bib number is 48874 and you can, I'm given to understand, get nearly-live updates on my (v.slow) progress throughout the event (I hesitate to call it a 'race', at least for my own involvement in the process).

Wish me luck.

As some of you may have heard, the Chicago Marathon was canceled around noon today due to the heat. I was around mile 16, headed east on Jackson when they told us to skip the Southside portion of the course and just head straight to Grant Park. I did so and crossed the finish line, but that time is for about 18 miles, not 26 -- I was on track to finish in about 6 hours. They gave everyone a medal, so I'll have to make an asterix for mine.

Until then, running in the Marathon was as crazy and fun as I expected it to be. Matt Larsen and I started the run together, but as soon as we'd seen our incredible support crew -- Erica, Brandi, and Matt's dad and stepmom -- he headed off (Matt finished for reals). There were all sorts of folks running and so many people being so supportive. And my IT Bands stopped hurting around 8 pm tonight, so I'm ready to do another (entire) Marathon as soon as I can.

After the jump, a map of the course I took.

I just posted a bunch of photos from the Marathon -- some that I took with a lil' camera while running and some Erica took while spectating and cheering.

Finally, Blewt (which now includes me, so I guess I can't complain) has released the Impress These Apes finale videos. Mine includes footage from the video that I had playing on a screen to the left of the stage (you can briefly see it at about 0:57 into the video). I'm not sure what I can add at this point. Oh, other than to answer a real question I got: yes, bananas are very hard to juggle -- I'm not faking that part.

Everyone's finale videos:

Amanda - "Conversation with Chicago"
Brady - "Ventanas"
Erin - "14 Challenges"
Fuzzy - "Bananas"
Jarrad - "An Apes Review"
Jenny - "Finale! The Musical"
Kristen - "Desparate Houseflower"
Margaret - "The Beginning"

In honor of Columbus Day, Erica and Jim Fath's musical number from the first season of Impress These Apes.

So I took pictures on the opening night of Soiree DADA with a disposable camera, with interesting, if not excellent, results. Mid-way through the run I saw the show again and took some shots with my normally dependable little U30 which totally freaked out. Well, where there's two, I have to make it three and make it a series. So for closing weekend I stopped in at Walgreen's and bought the cheapest digital camera they had -- a $10 Vivitar "Mini Digital Camera". My goodness, what a terrible camera. I've used plenty of these little cameras over the years (I have a weakness for them) and this one is by far the worst. Oh, it's so bad. (And Vivitar doesn't even want to acknowledge this little turd -- hold onto that driver CD, because you can't download the driver from the Vivitar website.)

(I also took some pictures with my now-non-freaking U30.)

Making Money by Terry Pratchett

I'm a huge fan of Pratchett's Discworld books, but I have to say that this is not the best of the bunch. Maybe it's that the main character, Going Postal's Moist von Lipwig, is a thoroughly reformed scallywag. In Postal we all knew that he was going to realize that he had a heart of gold and do the right thing, but it was fun watching him discover it. And the plot is clever enough, but maybe just a bit too clever, with too many of its gears exposed. It's not bad -- I LLOLed* a few times -- but I've read better from Pratchett.

* It's well documented that LOL, originally "Laugh(ed) Out Loud", has become completely devalued. So I'm introducing LLOL -- Literally** Laughed Out Loud.
** Of course, since literally is also already devalued from its original meaning, I may be fighting a losing battle here.

Erica's dad was in the Vicksburg Post today for a piece of road art he did 34 years ago. You can go read the article there, or I've tucked it below the jump for posterity...

Update: some followups.

Set in a future where people can make multiple, temporary copies of themselves, Kiln People by David Brin is meant to be a sort of noir-meets-scifi novel. But I found it to be something of a slog. It just didn't seem very (and I use this word advisedly) real. Only the fact that I've enjoyed many other Brin novels got me through the first 300 pages, and by then I'd made such an investment in the dang thing, I had to push on to the end.

We spent the weekend in Mississippi, visiting Erica's folks, eating plenty of food (of course), and attending the Smith/Reid family reunion. As an extra treat, Sara and Erik and Faelyn came along for the ride. For a three-day trip with the stated goal of having as few goals as possible, we sure packed a lot in. And it was delightful to get to spend so much time with Faelyn, who is one of my favorite small people.

Of note in the food dept., the Reid family staple Goldie's Trail Bar-B-Que has moved. (2430 South Frontage Road, Vicksburg, MS is the new address -- the old one is still on a bunch of websites.) The old place had a quaint log cabin-y exterior and no decor to speak of inside. The new place has even less decor inside and a very bland outside. However, it's three times the size of the old place and the food is the same. Oh, except for the addition of an incredible sandwich -- the Becca's Special. Goldie's has always had great garlic bread and this sandwich lets you put barbequed beef, pork, or sausage on garlic bread. It's an excellent idea and I can't believe I never thought of it before.

There's a story behind this photo and I don't think I want to share it in public. Maybe I will at Sickest Stories. Yeah, it's that kind of story.

Did I take some other pictures while we were there? Uh, yeah.

Since the 70%-Marathon I haven't run at all - I've set the alarm for running-time a couple of mornings and then snooze-buttoned my way through it. It's really interesting what a difference the structure of training and goal of the race make. Right now running is in the "I really should for my own general benefit and long term success" category and that means that, like flossing, it just doesn't happen.

Also, I was really happy that I'd made it through the whole training process and nearly-marathon without any of the crazy side-effects you hear about -- bleeding nipples and so on. Well, it turns out I actually did lose a toenail, it was just hanging on by a sliver and I didn't notice until I sat on my foot funny on the couch. Neato. Doesn't hurt at all, it just... fell off. I'll spare you pictures.

Tony Sam heads off to LA real soon now and tonight was his last night at Chicago Underground Comedy. ChUC will soldier on under Elizabeth and Dan's terrible rule, but we'll miss Tony.

It's nearly Halloween and so for a spooooky Wednesday afternoon I'll repost this zombie movie we made last year for the Fast Forward Film Festival. Boo.

I can't really complain about Vengeance in Vicksburg, because I knew what I was getting into when I bought the darn thing at the Jackson Airport. V in V is number five in a series of "Mississippi Mysteries" by Phil Hardwick, each an alliteratively titled mystery set in a different town in Mississippi. Hardwick is, according to the back cover, an "award-winning real estate columnist" and indeed the descriptions of the locales are best thing about the book. The mystery, and even the action sequences, are kind of boring.

While we were in Vicksburg this past weekend it happened that one of the Second City touring companies was performing in town. I called one of our friends in the company to see if we could meet up after their show and he said, "while I've got you on the phone, could you tell me the name of a local small town and a local tourist attraction -- we have a place in the show where we throw those in and it always gets a laugh, just saying the names of local things." This book is that same principle, only for 112 pages.

There are twelve times as many sheep in New Zealand as people. So if a sheep-breeding experiment on a New Zealand farm went wrong, and the sheep became... hungry, that would be something of a problem, to put it mildly. That's the premise of Black Sheep, a 2007 indie horror/comedy from New Zealand. We've got all the classic elements here: a plucky band of survivors, a hero overcoming his fears, family conflict spilling over into the disaster, a mad scientist, and killer sheep. The special effects are suitably gross for you horror fans (courtesy of WETA Workshop, of Lord of the Rings fame) and the humor is pretty... humorous. FuzzyCo grade: A.

Your Aspie score: 53 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 170 of 200
You are very likely neurotypical

What with one of the contestants on America's Next Top Model having Asperger's syndrome, we've been talking about around Team Gerdes HQ and now you too can take an Internet Quiz to diagose yourself.

(Please do not diagose yourself using an Internet Quiz.)

(via Whatever)