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November 24, 2004
Weather
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
I just checked and I see that it's 32 and (probaby) snowing in Chicago. I'm in Austin for Thanksgiving, where it's 65 and sunny. Did I have a point? Oh yeah -- neener-neener.
There was a thunderstorm last night and my 4-year old niece came running inside, not scared but super-excited. She's a weather buff and wanted us to turn on the TV so she could watch the storm radar map in the bottom corner of the screen. We were all (well, she was) very disappointed that the main storm missed us by a few miles and that there was very little chance of a tornado.
Posted by Fuzzy at 8:11 PM | Comments (0)
Raccoons
I just posted a lil' thing about Chicago raccoons over at the Chicago Metblog.
Posted by Fuzzy at 8:06 PM | Comments (0)
Wild Chicago
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
Walking over to Erica's house this week, I ran into this raccoon in Andersonville. (I mapquested it this week -- it's 1.65 miles from my place to Erica's. Soon I will have walked 500 miles just to be the man that falls down at her door.) It's been a couple of years since I've seen a raccoon in Chicago, but according to the DNR, they are more common in the Chicago area than in any other part of the state. A word to the wise: watch out for Raccoon Roundworm Encephalitis. Oh wait, you have to eat dirt or bark that has raccoon feces on it? Never mind then (unless you eat a lot of dirt or bark).
Posted by Fuzzy at 7:46 PM | Comments (0)
Flickr
Robyn at the cast party for Camenae's Can You Hear Their Voices?
I've set up a Flickr account to share sets of photos that I don't feel like making a whole gallery for here on FuzzyCo ... party snaps and such.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:38 PM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2004
Flash Free Photography
Ms. Pixy and Natanya at the Belmont Burlesque Revue
Adam Smith has written a nice statement about why he prefers not to use a flash when photographing live events that echoes the reasons I do my performance photography without a flash. And since he wrote it, I don't have to, I can just link to it.
(via Accordion Guy)
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:24 PM | Comments (0)
Bare at the Bird's Nest
photo by Erica Reid
Here's Bare doing our standup at the Bird's Nest on Monday night. It shows off two things -- we started out in shirts and ties and ended up in our undershirts -- because that's comedy. And you can see how great the lighting (or rather -- the light) is at the Bird's Nest.
I think the show went fairly well. Especially for a Monday night in the back room of a bar with Monday Night Football blaring in the front room.
Posted by Fuzzy at 9:48 PM | Comments (0)
Just night time and a puddle
It's becoming a small tradition at FuzzyCo -- when I'm out of town, I actually have a few minutes to go through the pictures I take around Chicago. So, from Austin, Texas, a puddle on the corner of Huron and McClurg.
Posted by Fuzzy at 9:31 PM | Comments (0)
I never said it was all high-brow around here
How embarrassing -- you've just made eye-contact with a cute guy and you poot so hard it blows up your skirt and makes sparkles in the air.
Posted by Fuzzy at 9:21 PM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2004
If I can't kvetch on my own blog, where can I kvetch?
Work is busy enough this afternoon that I'm not going to go get a real lunch, so I grabbed a Maruchan California Vegetable Instant Lunch from the breakroom vending machine. Evidently, in California when they think of vegetables they think of carrot shavings and six freeze-dried peas.
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:00 PM | Comments (4)
Neutrino Projects movement in Dramatics Magazine
This month's issue of Dramatics Magazine (the Educational Theatre Association’s magazine for theatre students and teachers) has an excellent article on the entire Neutrino Projects movement, with comments from Kurt in New York and Justin in Seattle, and a big picture of Chicago's Michael, Beth, and Dave.
(via Neutrino)
Posted by Fuzzy at 1:27 PM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2004
Quick Weekend Plugs
Tonight is your last chance to see Don't Spit The Water, the "crazy live game show" that Erica is in. The Playground (3209 N Halsted) at 10:30 pm.
Tomorrow night I'll be on stage with CCC at The Playground (still 3209 N Halsted) at 8:00 pm. Mustang Repair, The Party, and Homey Loves Chachi also perform. I can slip you a 2-for-1 if you ask.
Monday Bare will be... OK, let's back up half a step here. I've been improvising for (eek) 14 years now, which means that for 14 years I've been having this short conversation: "So what do you do?" "Improv comedy" "Oh, like stand up?" "Not really."
Well, this Monday I have to change that conversation a little. Because Shaun and I will be doing stand up comedy at the Bird's Nest Bar (2500 N Southport). The wings are great and our jokes will be pre-planned.
Posted by Fuzzy at 2:03 PM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2004
I'm an Editor
I didn't actually go to the Pixies show last night, but that didn't stop me from assembling Josette's photos and Erica's words into a post on the Chicago Metroblog.
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:36 PM | Comments (0)
Ruining my stories
A variation of this keeps happening to me with friends I haven't seen in a while -- I'll run into someone on the train and start to share a story of some cool thing that happened to me recently and they'll interupt because they've read it here on FuzzyCo. By sharing my stories with strangers, I'm ruining them for telling to my friends in person. And what am I without stories. Nothing, I tell you, nothing.
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:32 AM | Comments (2)
November 15, 2004
Kickball folks clean up nice
Becca said, "Put up your pictures from the kickball end-of-season party and make me the gateway image so that people can see how pretty I am when I get dressed up." There you go, Becca. Very pretty. Nowhere near as pretty as my girlfriend in some old t-shirt, though (sorry, I'm biased).
In any case, I've posted a slew of pictures from the Chicago Deep Dish League 2004 Fall Season Championship Playoffs and from the End-of-Season Party at Fizz.
Posted by Fuzzy at 7:38 PM | Comments (1)
What's Your Shuffle?
Via Whatever...
"1. Open up the music player on your computer (if you have one -- the music player, I mean. Clearly you have a computer, because otherwise you couldn't read this).
2. Set it to play your entire music collection.
3. Hit the "shuffle" command.
4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That's right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It's time for total musical honesty. You can put the list in the comment thread, or write it up in your blog or Journal and then post a link in the comments."
Here's my list, with albums only because iTunes grabs that, too, when you do a copy-paste:
- So Fresh So Clean - Outkast - Stankonia
- To Be Continued - DJ Krush - Holonic
- When Good Dogs Do Bad Things - The Dillinger Escape Plan With Mike Patton - Irony Is A Dead Scene EP
- Summer Crane - The Avalanches - Since I Left You
- Gotta Get Over - Gang Starr - Full Clip
- Speed Queen - MC Frontalot - Nerdcore Hiphop (demo)
- It's Yours - T la Rock and Jazzy Jay - www.cocaineblunts.com
- Pete Standing Alone - Boards Of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children
- Expresso Noir - Legendary Pink Dots - The Maria Dimension
- Little Room - The White Stripes - White Blood Cells
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:10 AM | Comments (3)
November 12, 2004
Just to spite them...
Someone is trying to use comment spam to (presumably) 1) associate Elizabeth Lane Lawley's web site with some unflattering terms and 2) get her website listed in the comment spam blacklists. Thanks to MT-Blacklist they hit this site but were blocked. Just to spite them, I'm going to link to her as a nice lady.
Posted by Fuzzy at 7:22 PM | Comments (1)
November 11, 2004
Stella
Stella at the Metro, November 10, 2004.
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:49 AM | Comments (1)
John C.F. Ricklefs
This plaque is set into the sidewalk in front of Swift Elementary School. Sadly, there is no tree in front of the plaque (there's a tree behind it, but I'm sure it's not 83 years old). In 1921 there wasn't yet a national Armistice Day (that came in 1926) so the children of Swift School were pretty on the ball.
Today is, of course, Veteran's Day in the States. In Commonwealth countries it's "Remembrance Day".
Today I am remembering my father (eek - that makes it sound like he's dead. He's not.) and thinking of "exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations"1.
Update: Joey posted In Flanders Fields on his site today.
Update 2: Teresa Nielsen-Hayden's extensive Great War post from last year (she's not doing one this year).
1 Congressional resolution, 1926
Posted by Fuzzy at 7:00 AM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2004
Pictures from New Orleans
Well, not quite a month later, I've posted a bunch of pictures from Bare's trip to the Southern Improv Festival in New Orleans.
Posted by Fuzzy at 7:03 PM | Comments (0)
November 9, 2004
Really. Good. Lunch.
OK, so on the way to lunch I saw an ad on the side of a bus that promoted literacy and sexiness. But that's not what made lunch so great.
Pot Belly recently added "add bacon for 50¢" to their menu. (I have an entire rant about the superiority of simple menus like Pot Belly, Jimmy John's, and Chipotle to complicated "fancy" ones like Subway and Quiznos (Yes, I just called Subway fancy)). I've been getting bacon on my turkey sandwich for a couple weeks to make a club and it's been great. But today I went for it. I put bacon on a Wreck (Potbelly's one-of-each-meat sandwich). Extra meat on my meat, please. I was a vegetarian for ten years, you know. Wheee!
But it doesn't stop there. Right behind me in line was a Pot Belly employee and he ordered his sandwich and a chocolate and peanut butter shake. I didn't think that was one of the offered flavors. I looked back at the shake menu to make sure. Nope. Chocolate. Oreo. Banana. Etc. But no peanut butter and certainly no chocolate and peanut butter. I leaned back and asked the guy, "Did you just say chocolate and peanut butter?" "I sure did." "Well, then I want a chocolate and peanut butter shake, too."
I had already grabbed a Stewart's Key Lime soda from the cooler and I didn't put it back, because I could tell this was going to be a lunch of decadence.
The sandwich: good. Not earth shattering, because the Wreck is already so meaty that the bacon gets little lost.
The Stewart's: fine. A clean, refreshing taste, as always.
The shake: yuuummmmmmmm! Real peanut butter blended up in a chocolate shake. Choc and PB is one of my favorite sweet taste combinations. There were a couple of straw-clogs of peanut butter, but nothing disastrous. And I don't think I'd want it blended any finer -- I like a little peanut butter texture in the shake.
And I've got further taste sensations awiting me -- the C&PB ordering employee told me to come in some time when he was working behind the counter and ask for his "banana pudding" shake. As long as that isn't some urban slang I don't get, I can't wait.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:30 PM | Comments (0)
November 8, 2004
Kickball (near) Champions
Your 2004 WAKA Chicago Deep Dish League (cough-2nd place) Champions. See you in the spring!
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:47 PM | Comments (0)
November 6, 2004
Damn, that was close
We held them to 0-0 until the bottom of the 5th, 2 outs and then they scored a run. Congrats to Navy Menace.
Posted by Fuzzy at 1:30 PM | Comments (1)
0-0
Top of the 3rd and we're tied 0-0. The Kansas City team just showed up for the regional.
Posted by Fuzzy at 1:01 PM | Comments (0)
Finals
Dangit. Phone cutting off posts. Us over Kicktators 10-3, us over Feets of Fury 4-2. Next, Navy Menace in the finals.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)
Semi-finals, here we come
They scored 3 runs in the first inning and we got off to a slow start -- we didn't start scoring until the 3rd inning. But then we took off and we beat them 10-3.
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)
Kickball Playoffs
The first round of the kickball playoffs were supposed to be on Thursday night, but were rained out. So we're doing the whole thing today - and I'll be liveblogging the day.
It's a beautifully clear morning here at Union Park in Chicago, and it's even pretty warm (well, 60 or so). We're up against the Kicktators first.
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)
November 3, 2004
Word count will remain 0
Another oops -- NaNoWriMo snuck up on me this year. I'm going to take this year off -- I know I have too much to do this month.
If you're a musician, you might want to try NaSoAlMo.
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:11 PM | Comments (0)
Oops - No Bare show tonight
Bare will not be performing at The Deuce tonight. Oops.
However, we will be performing at The Playground (3209 N Halsted) on Saturday night at 8 pm. I'll also be performing with Chicago Comedy Company in the same show, so you'll get two doses of Fuzzy for your $10 (and I can slip you a 2-for-1 coupon if you let me know ahead of time).
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)
"Can I speak on what I believe, sir?"
Alan Keyes was heckled (1.8 M mp3) as he went to vote in Calumet City. (via girl in black, audio from the Roe Conn Show)
Obama wins, 70-27. It's like a Christmas present you know you're going to get, but it's still nice to actually sit down and unwrap it.
Also, in the NW suburbs, Melissa Bean beat Phil "Now, what's this?" Crane (51-48).
Out in Cicero, incumbent Rep. Frank Aguilar (R) put a woman into the race (her only support was from his PAC) and she won, 53.2 to 46.8. W, you may ask, TF?
Little bits of good news from other parts of the country. In Pennsylvania, race-baiting eye doctor Melissa Brown was defeated by Democrat Allyson Schwartz.
One big frustration here in Chicago: despite the unendorsement of every bar association, the Chicago Tribune, citizens' groups, and me, Susan McDunn was retained as a judge with 68% YESes. It's a small consolation that she received the most NOes and least YESes of any judge. It was very frustrating last night to be at an election night gathering and overhear an otherwise-politically-aware friend say, "I got confused by all the judges, so I just voted Yes on all of them." Damn, I say, it.
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)
Sigh
From an email from a friend of mine on active service in the military:
"Also, this election is killing me. And four more years of George W. just might."
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)
November 2, 2004
Get off the internet and vote!
Get off the internet and vote! and get a t-shirt or a button or something...
via girl in black
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:56 AM | Comments (1)
Vote! - HappyFunDemocracyDay!
We voted!
In case you missed my earlier posts:
Vote! - In Case of Problems
Vote! - Where to Vote
Vote! - Judges ("McDunn is done.")
Why Vote VanVactor? (special for St. Louis County, Minnesota's First District)
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)
November 1, 2004
Don't Spit The Water
On Friday night, Erica was the first one of the Don't Spit The Water comedians to make a contestant spit the water. Above, she is doing so by sheer intimidation.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:07 PM | Comments (2)
Halloween 3, sorta
A dangerous combination is me, my facial hair, a clippers, and boredom. This was for a "biker-guy" costume that never really happened on Sunday.
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:34 PM | Comments (0)
Halloween 2
Sunday night Erica was waxlips-a-scarirific in a Vote, F*cker shirt.
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:23 PM | Comments (0)
Halloween
There are costumes you just know what the person is (e.g. sexy cop). And then there are the ones where you have to ask, "what are you?" Saturday night Erica and I were lawyers. We represent the lollipop guild.
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:29 PM | Comments (0)
Vote! - In Case of Problems
The New York Times has a list of "What to Do on Election Day" that includes these items:
5. Know your rights concerning provisional ballots. No voter can be turned away in any state this year without being allowed to vote. If there is a question about your eligibility, you must be allowed to vote on a provisional ballot, the validity of which will be determined later. But if you are entitled to vote on a regular ballot, you should insist on doing so, since a provisional ballot may be disqualified later on a technicality.
6. Know where to turn for help. If you experience problems voting, or if you see anything improper at the polls, you may want to get help. There will be nonpartisan poll monitors at many polling places. (There may also be partisan poll watchers, and it's possible one of them may be the person objecting to your voting.) It is a good idea to bring a cellphone, and phone numbers of nonpartisan hotlines like the Election Protection program's 1-866-OURVOTE and Common Cause's 1-866-MYVOTE1.
7. Be prepared for long lines. In some precincts, the wait may stretch into hours. Try to get to your polling place very early in the morning, or between the before-work and after-work rushes. As long as you are in line before the polls close, you are legally entitled to vote. Do not let poll workers close the polls until you have voted.
Here in Chicago, the U.S. attorney's office will have a hot line to report voting-related complaints. The number is 312-469-6157.
Via kottke.org and the Trib
Posted by Fuzzy at 1:25 PM | Comments (0)