Chicago: customers are advised to allow extra travel time

For the record, Sarah's birthday-party weekend also = Kelsey and Leaf's wedding-party weekend.

<i>Millennium Park
Sing Me Back Home featuring The New Orleans Social Club
Date: 8/24/2007
Time: 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM


Park location: Jay Pritzker Pavilion

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Six weeks after Hurricane Katrina, a group of legendary musicians from New Orleans gathered in Austin, Texas, to record Sing Me Back Home. Over seven magical days and nights, The New Orleans Social Club was born. For this debut performance in Chicago, we salute the musicians and culture of New Orleans.

Featuring the New Orleans Social Club: Ivan Neville, Leo Nocentelli, Raymond Weber, Tony Hall, and Henry Butler along with special guest Irma Thomas, Troy "Trombone Shorty"
</I>

http://chicagoist.com/2007/08/21/ken_vandermark.php

Yes! Wedding Party! We are excited to get our drink on with everyone! Since moving, my drinking habits have lessened.

Also: I am now wearing a wrist brace.

random tidbit: there is a person who i have seen working around the university who i would swear was my old neighbor in chicago. the distinguishing feature? i believe this person to be transgendering from a man into a woman. i kind of want to say something b/c s/he was really kind to us when we lived there (called the cops once on my behalf when i got into a yelling match with a very rude dude driving through the alley). but, really i haven't looked at this person closely enough to know FOR SURE. the main thing is the platinum blonde hair & the man-to-woman boobs. I guess i could just get over it & ask if s/he relocated from chicago b/c s/he reminds me of a nice neighbor i had.

"did you move from chicago" seems like a perfectly inoffensive way to start a conversation

i realized this as i typed it out. i think i just get nervous b/c i can imagine being mid-trans as a difficult position to be in. i noticed a lot people staring yesterday when i saw her/him.

back to that radio show... it very much reminded me of Six Degrees of Separation. One of my favorite dollar-bin cut-out movies ever, right up there with Joe Vs. The Volcano. :)

Anyway. Imagination.

The imagination has been so debased that imagination -- being imaginative -- rather than being the lynchpin of our existence now stands as a synonym for something outside ourselves like science fiction or some new use for tangerine slices on raw pork chops -- what an imaginative summer recipe -- and Star Wars! So imaginative! And Star Trek -- so imaginative! And Lord of the Rings -- all those dwarves -- so imaginative -- The imagination has moved out of the realm of being our link, our most personal link, with our inner lives and the world outside that world -- this world we share. What is schizophrenia but a horrifying state where what's in here doesn't match up with what's out there?
Why has imagination become a synonym for style?
I believe that the imagination is the passport we create to take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is another phrase for what is most uniquely us.

And science bears out this claim.

Also, our sense of self is a collection of stories that we, imaginative beings that we are, tell ourselves.

And we turn him into an anecdote, to dine out on, like we're doing right now. But it was an experience. I will not turn him into an anecdote. How do we keep what happens to us? How do we fit it into life without turning it into an anecdote, with no teeth, and a punch line you'll mouth over and over, years to come: "Oh, that reminds me of the time that impostor came into our lives. Oh, tell the one about that boy." And we become these human jukeboxes, spilling out these anecdotes. But it was an experience. How do we keep the experience?

The question almost answers itself.

:)

I've had a lot of coffee this morning.

Ooh good stuff.

it's an excellent movie. I wish I could see it on stage, like it was originally intended.

I love that you're geeking out over radio lab.

Nothing gets my goat quite as profoundly as speculative science. :)

as if there's any other kind.

The way it works on stage, the main couple is really trying hard to tell the audience the story, as if we're guests in their salon -- we're part of the gossip, we're in the room with them.

If you liked Joe vs. The Volcano, you should read some of John Patrick Shanley's plays, especially his late 80s/early 90s plays, especially this one. Lots of philosophical but virile talk, kind of like that passage from Six Degrees.

ooh cool. Thanks!

Is there a really big moon in it?

Not to be Mr. Hypochondriac, but lately I have been noticing little specks and squiggles in my field of vision, usually only when I'm looking closely at a light-colored surface. When my eyes move, the specks move with them, in the same direction. Is this normal? I mean, I can understand if it's just normal dirt or hairs on the lens of my eyeball, but it's weird that I've never noticed them until very recently. I have to make an opthalmologist appointment anyway.

ur TRIPPIN

http://www.sxc.hu/pic/m/k/ka/katkotrla/93494_trippin_in_chicago_pt_3.jpg

We went through there coming back from Colorado. It was nice, I hadn't been that way since I first visited Chicago. It reminds me of Disney World.

It is normal. I can't remember what they're called, though?

So have I just never noticed them before? Or is there a reason for them showing up?

Oh yeah, floaters: http://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/spotsfloats.htm

Is this light-colored surface the computer screen? If so, that's completely normal.

Hmmm. Maybe I have a detached retina.

oh my. john. get yourself to a doctor & stop worrying!!

it's normal anyway. You can get that staring at a clear blue sky, too. Everyone has that.

Maybe I have a detached retina.

hypochondriacs should be denied access to all medical websites.

Try waxing your eyeballs.

I think you can just pop them out and scrub them, can't you?

Well, like I said, I have to make an opthalmologist appointment soon, anyway, so I'll just mention that I've had an increase in floaters and then the doc can tell me what that means.

an increase? A minute ago you'd never heard of them.

Argh!! MINE EYES! I was just looking at the wiki entry on opthalmologists and saw an eye surgery pic.

i'm assuming he means from zero to some.

As a kid I kept asking my eye doctors about floaters and they kind of brushed off my question and I keep thinking: these things look like bacteria! like little organisms!!

Get some bromide eye wash from the drugstore -- it will make your eyes feel better and will clear them out temporarily.

Also, I don't know why this would be, but maybe they've increased since you started wearing glasses.

Is there a really big moon in it?
One of the plays is called Welcome to the Moon. Shanleys plays and screenplays from that period, all the plays and Moonstruck and Joe Versus The Volcano are pretty much one long continuous work.

AMOEBAS

http://wilderdom.com/images/Amoeba.gif

http://www.gpmatthews.nildram.co.uk/animalcules/clathrulina.gif

but maybe they've increased since you started wearing glasses.

I wondered that, too!

i'm assuming he means from zero to some.

Yes. I mean, I'm pretty sure they've been there when I've stared at a perfectly clear blue sky, but now I see them just when I'm reading a book.

SUMMER 2008

DON'T

CLOSE

YOUR

EYES

"floaters"
www.floatersthemovie.com
(c)2008

I am scared to find out what that movie is about.

floaters, duh

I just made it up. I imagine a series of posters, each with a character (various ages, genders, races) with a balled fist against each eye.

Uh-oh!

Because floaters or flashes can be an indication of a serious problem, you should our doctor when:
You see floaters for the first time
You notice an increase in the number or size of floaters
You experience the sudden onset of flashes

What movie was it where someone threw a snickers bar in the pool?

True story: first grade show-and-tell, my show-and-tell was telling everyone to close their eyes and dig their face into their arm so that they could see all the little colorful fireworks flashes.

xpost Caddyshack!

and it was actually a Baby Ruth

http://www.docsteinmetz.com/low_vision/floaters_flashes/images/2smallani.gif

argh nebbishy people

"My daughter has come home from her year in Japan and I have all these squiggles in front of my eyes when I look at her."

Caddyshack has philosophical implications as well.

So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-galunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.