Say something spiteful about Chicago.

On the upside, I'll fit right in.

You mean that's still an optional kinda thing? Even after 762 people died in the summer of 1995?

and, oh yeah, you can't walk anywhere in the city without a nice, fat gob of spit on the ground, just about every few steps...

so, um, Kenan... what exactly do you plan to do about this???

Kenan you're wrong if you think the south prepares you for Chicago summers though - they are brutal

although, what I SHOULD say is I hate Chicago and its surrounding areas so goddamn much that I'll have a hard time adjusting to life WITHOUT lethal cabdrivers, Streetwise-salesmen, gobs of spit marking the sidewalk every twenty feet (they vary in shape and size and color so damn much, I suppose they're very nearly an alternative form of landmark), pasty-faced alterna-kids hanging out in front of DePaul in Speed Racer T's and stylishly-unkempt hair... I probably won't find a third of the inspiration I get here, when I'm out west... oh, well...

Another bad things is that there aren't as many good record stores as you might expect.

I mention on the other thread that wide swaths of the city are unforgivably ugly, but that can have its charming side too.

(the areas where they don't salt are bad, too---cos then, of course, you slip and land flat on your back unless you walk in mincing little granny steps and thusly take five hours to get somewhere on foot. or put spikes in your shoes and/or boots.)

and no, not as many good record stores as you'd hope. there are some, and you can find them---but there used to be more (of course). it's sad, how many have gone down. :(

aha! something else---permit parking areas have grown exponentially in recent time. it's so irritating. if you ever decided to go up to the Music Box theatre and surrounding areas, many of the side streets now have obnoxious speed humps in them---and some have resorted to miscellaneous (and far more dangerous) roundabouts in already crowded, congested areas as well.

the #77 Fullerton bus still takes an age to come from whenever you've got yourself to the bus stop, and when it arrives, it's always cram packed and you feel like a sardine. if it's in the summer, the A/C will probably not be working. (they've actually got A/C on most busses now---except the #6 Jeffery Express. but at least you get to sit in the accordion on that one if you really want, which has its own special charm.)

the whole of Wrigleyville counts as a snide enough remark in itself.

I guess I'll find out when I get there, but I find the thought of summers in Chicago being worse then summers in Texas... well, nearing the range of mathematically impossible. When you say "brutal," do you mean 50 consecutive days of temperatures over 100 degrees, peaking at 112 in early September? Cause that was the summer of 2000, and THAT, my friend, was fucking brutal.

Back to Barry Popik. Having gotten Big Apple squared away, Barry turned his attention to Chicago's nickname, the Windy City. The average mope believes Chicago was so dubbed because it's windy, meteorologically speaking. The more sophisticated set (including, till recently, your columnist) thinks the term originated in a comment by Charles Dana, editor of the New York Sun in the 1890s. Annoyed by the vocal (and ultimately successful) efforts of Chicago civic leaders to land the world's fair celebrating Columbus's discovery of America, Dana urged his readers to ignore "the nonsensical claims of that windy city"--windy meaning excessively talkative.

But that may not be the true explanation either. Scouring the magazines and newspapers of the day, Popik found that the nickname commonly used for Chicago switched from the Garden City to the Windy City in 1886, several years before Dana's comment. The earliest citation was from the Louisville Courier-Journal in early January, 1886, when it was used in reference to the wind off Lake Michigan. In other words, the average mope was right all along! However, when Popik attempted to notify former Chicagoan but soon-to-be New Yorker Hillary Rodham Clinton of his findings, she blew him off with a form letter--and this from a woman facing a campaign for the Senate. Come on, Hill, quit worrying about the Puerto Ricans and pay attention here. You want to lose the etymologist vote?

'Twas a joke. All I know of Chicago I learned from reading Eightball Comics.

"Fag" is just an all-around sort of idiotic thing to say, but if you combine it with "wind", you've got something really offensive there.

At first I was doubtful whether I wanted to see it. It has a dull omnipresence on London transport. It promised to be 2.5 hours in front of the TV when I could be reading Walt Whitman or Mary McCarthy. And it was clearly going to be packed with beauties dancing provocatively in their underwear.

But I stayed with it long enough to get with it... and in the end, I enjoyed it. The narrative gained a little propulsion; some of the songs seemed creditable pastiches of a mode I like; and the visual / dance routines really started to grab me with their ingenuity and aptness; I liked the way that the film cut between reality and dance. It even ended happily, and Richard Gere managed not to infuriate me. So I endorse the picture after all!

I wonder did anybody else see it.

I like how the pinefox thinks beautiful women in their underwear is a bad thing.