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Housekeeping, life updates and other bits without a natural fit

Alright, who's the stealth street team member?

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A comment from the post on My Boys:

Jenny said…
Don’t miss “My Boys” this Monday, August 27! This episode is hands-down the funniest one yet and you’ll be kicking yourself if you miss it! As you know, since Brendan was selected as one of Chicago’s Hottest Bachelor’s, he’s turned into a complete jerk. In an effort to save him, PJ and the guys have a “douchebag intervention.” VERY FUNNY! “My Boys” is every Monday at 10/9c on TBS.

C’mon now, own up.

Although I must say I am intrigued by the idea of a douchebag intervention.

The word is out

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When writing here, I’ve never been particularly coy about who I am or what I’m up to. But I also don’t go out of my way to put myself front and center either, even if I make it a point to self-promote whenever possible. While the Internet now considers me the most famous me in Chicago* (take that, director of the short film Ten and president of Tribune Publishing!), I still like to pretend I have a certain amount of virtual anonymity.

I’ve had my short-term reasons for that, but mostly I like to have control over my world, and how I’m perceived. It’s silly, really, but the impulse is there nonetheless. As such, I’m not one to dwell much on my personal life here. I prefer to let the words and the work be the focus. In my job, you really have to make peace with the notion that you’re leaving quite the footprint for those who want to play technological archaeologist. Even though what I do here is separate from the job, I’m still aware it’s out there for all to see. And while I prefer not to obscure my personality, with great bandwith comes great responsibility. So I prefer to keep a firm grasp on the “me” that’s out there. It’s the difference between uploading pictures of oneself holding a beer…or holding a beer bong.

I’m occasionally jealous of some writers who take their lives and pour them so exquisitely over their blogs. Like this fella, for instance. It’s possible I’ll get to the point where I’ll say “Ah, to hell with it” but not quite yet.

Anyway, that’s about the biggest self-revelation you’re going to get from me here. But I figured since I had such an influx of new readers today, it might be best to let you know what you’re all in for if you stick around. I certainly hope you do.

* Nope, those aren’t my numbers at the top of that page. Told you I’m careful.

My Boys, my struggle

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(Note: Oblivious Living Chapter 1.15 will appear in this space tomorrow).

I keep hearing that the second season of the TBS show My Boys is supposed to be television’s equivalent of the Most Improved Player, but if last night’s episode is any indication, everyone who is saying this is a huge liar. So here are a few suggestions on how to fix it:

1. Either be set in Chicago, or stop trying to convince everyone you are.
No one would refer to the “Medieval Times in Schaumburg.” On the rare occasion such a reference would be in order, it’d just be “Medieval Times.” There’s one in the entire state. It’s not as if the area’s so overrun with them that you’d need to identify which one you’re describing.

And come on: no one is going to go to Lake Forest to pick up “lonely, rich, beautiful women” at a yoga class, they’re going to go to Evanston. Lake Forest is damn near fucking Wisconsin as far as anyone in this city is concerned.

I realize the writers are trying to show off just how “Chicago” their characters are (and to be fair, the bit where PJ and Stephanie are reading the convoluted parking signs was a nice touch), but it’s failing miserably. And the only people that care, live here. So they might as well lighten up on the references, and focus more on writing people who seem like folks who live here. Speaking of…


2. Give Stephanie a heart, or a brain, or nerve or…something
I’m a little torn here because honestly, there are plenty of women in Chicago – and elsewhere – like PJ’s friend Stephanie. They’re a little shallow, or manage their money poorly, or obsess about one thing in their lives to the detriment of everything else.

But though they may have one fatal flaw, there’s usually one thing they are good at: their job, being a good friend, giving to charity, etc. Stephanie is apparently good at nothing, and a compendium of the worst of all human flaws. Here is a character whose sole purpose is to suggest that pretty women spend lavish amounts of money and only care about getting a guy. Yes, some women do, but they also do much more.

3. Drop the voiceovers or at least drop the sports metaphors.
No one – and I mean no one – who loves sports talks in sports metaphors for more than say, 1/5 of an average week. And I’m including people who are reporters for ESPN and get paid to speak in sports metaphors. Last night’s attempt to tie Bobby’s distancing himself from his rich family to players who only give up big salaries only to play for the love of the game was clunky as hell, and not just because no baseball player actually does this. We’re only about 18 episodes in, and tying in PJ’s career is only going to get harder.

4. Start planning a spinoff called These Dudes.
One of the complaints I made about this show early on was that “this is the only group of close friends that doesn’t constantly share in-jokes or riff off each other.” It’s the one thing that’s improved over last season. The guys are genuinely funny, and have a great interplay. It feels real. There’s bit in last night’s show about a six-foot urinal that was sharp, and witty, and written for actors who knew how to carry it off. I’d be happy to watch an entire show featuring the guy characters, although that brings up problems of its own. Which leads me to my last point…

5. Ditch PJ.
[A brief tangent here so I can admit a bias. From all the ads showcasing actress Jordana Spiro, I keep expecting her to be Amanda Bynes and I’m immediately disappointed when it turns out she isn’t. It’s not that I like Amanda Bynes all that much – in fact, I can honestly say I’ve never seen a full episode of any show she’s ever been on, or an entire film she’s been in. In fact, I had to look her up on IMDB.com to get a list of both, since the only thing I can remember her doing is that one movie where Colin Firth is her Dad and the other one where she plays a guy. I think I walked by a room once where the Colin Firth is My Dad movie was playing. But Bynes looks enough like Spiro that I keep expecting it to be Bynes, and she isn’t and for some reason, this disappoints me. Like when you see someone from behind and then they turn around and it turns out not to be them. I can’t explain why I am disappointed by not seeing someone I care barely identify, but there is is. And it probably colors the rest of this a little, so I thought it was only fair to mention.]

PJ is the weakest part of the whole show, and it’s because she’s ostensibly supposed to be the center of it. I don’t think Spiro’s a bad actress, but she’s either given little to do or is asked to demonstrate that PJ lacks the sense that women who hang around men have about guys. She isn’t particularly tomboyish, and isn’t particularly girly, which is fine. I know lots of women like that. And they’re all strong, smart, and together.

But PJ is none of these things. She’s presented with far less knowledge of the world than her character ought to have as a sports writer for a big city newspaper. As a result, any bit of energy the show musters up is immediately sucked out of the room anytime she’s onscreen because you can’t build a show around a weak character.

This week in self-promotion

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I was going through some old posts last night, and discovered this post wherein I predicted that Arcade Fire tickets going for $1000 would be “the straw that broke the camel’s back for scalpers.” Now, ignore for a moment that I meant “nail in the coffin” (I do love a good metaphor and/or cliche) and consider all the Police tickets that were going for face value last month on Ebay, Craigslist and the like thanks to scalpers (both the professional scalpers and the unprofessionals who took advantage of their season ticket privileges and flooded the secondary market). Can I call it or what?

Anyway, I pitched in on TOC‘s gambling issue this week. I spoke to an expert gambler named John Patrick, who gave me some valuable tips on playing mini-baccarat (2nd item), which I immediately squandered at the Harrah’s casino in Joliet (6th item). Still, if I can manage to find a $5 table the next time I’m in Vegas, I’ll give it another go. Click through those links for the full story, and be sure to check out the 2nd page of that “Beginner’s Luck” story, where you can see an illustration that is clearly meant to be me in my sharp-ass blazer.

By the way, if you ever want to have the easiest, most entertaining conversation of your life, ask me for Mr. Patrick’s number. He and I talked for about 45 minutes over the phone, and I am pretty sure I said less than 250 words the whole time, but it was the most fun I’ve ever had interviewing a source. Never was I so sad to have so little room in a piece for quotes.

Speaking of disappointments, I reviewed the TV series Voyagers! in last week’s issue (last item). Holy crap, is that show way better in my memory than in reality. With respect to plot and acting, it’s Knight Rider bad (hey, I love Knight Rider too but come on: there’s more ham in that show that your average slaughterhouse), but it does retain a ridiculous charm, even if it has production values on par with a couple of the short films I was in during college.

Finally, the archive of my appearance on Outside the Loop radio is up. I sound much more coherent here than I did on Rachel’s show last month.

Please keep in mind that I am available for your next birthday party, bar mitzvah or quinceañera.

Best thing all week

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Most of you probably saw the Create Your Own Simpsons avatar activity on The Simpsons Movie website. The site allowed you to create a Simpsons character that supposedly looked like you. I came close, but it was never quite right.

Today my co-worker Margaret sent me a link to Simpsonizeme.com, which allows you to do essentially the same, but with a picture of yourself, thereby offering a more lifelike depiction of yourself as…er, a cartoon.

I ended up with this:


Seriously, how much does that look like me? The eyebrows aren’t quite right, and my normally lantern-jawed chin is given short shrift, but otherwise: damn. You probably have a picture of me (drunk) making that exact face.

And if you’re saying to yourself “Say, I don’t remember you looking quite that way,” then perhaps you ought to show up here:

It’ll be fun, I promise. If not, you’ll get a beer for your trouble.*

* Offer good only for Old Style

Early warning

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I’ll be reading at Quimby’s (1854 W. North Ave) on Friday July 20th at 7 p.m. The reading is part of MachineFest, which works to make local music and art accessible to everyone in Chicago. The ‘fest is put on by Machine Media, and include rock shows, DJ sets, and readings throughout July. You can get info on all the shows (prices are free to $6) at their site.

As for what I’ll be reading, it won’t be Corgan-related like last year, but most likely will be about music. If that sound vague, it’s because…well, I haven’t quite finished my piece. But it’ll be hilarious, I promise. If it isn’t, I’ll buy you a beer at the Double Door show afterwards.
– 30 –

Transformers: Significantly less than meets the eye

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Regular readers of this space may have noticed that this week’s installment of Oblivious Living was not posted in its regular Monday slot. The reason for this was, in part, because I was busy preparing for a guest co-host appearance on Filmspotting, the weekly film podcast and radio program, regularly hosted by Adam Kempenaar and Sam Van Hallgren. I’ve been a fan of the show ever since I interviewed them for Chicagoist a couple years back, and was honored to be asked back a fourth time. I understand that if I make it to five, I get a special badge.

You can hear this week’s show here. Adam and I discuss Sicko and Transformers. I gave Sicko a generally positive review, though I expressed reservations with Moore’s style. I maintain he’d be a better filmmaker if he dialed back some of the shtick. As for Transformers, I really disliked it, as did Adam. During one of the breaks, he predicted that the show would get a lot of mail from people claiming that we didn’t get it or that we expected more out of a film that features giant robots fighting each other before turning into cars. Yet I expected little more than that, and even with that relatively simple premise, Michael Bay still managed to fuck it up.


The biggest problem is that there isn’t a single memorable character in Transformers, though Bumblebee comes close to having a Herbie-The-Love-Bug-style personality thanks to the constant sound bites issuing forth from his radio. (Explain to me again how a car radio would be able to broadcast movie clips?) Of the Autobots, Optimus Prime’s a stiff, Jazz is a shuck-and-jive caricature, and Ironhide…likes guns. We’re also never given a decent villain since Megatron doesn’t show up until very late in the film along with most of the other Decepticons who all look the same in robot form. They might as well be wearing t-shirts with their names on them like the bad guys in the old Batman TV series.

But at least they’re consistently – if lamely – written. The human characters fare much worse since their dialogue serves only to move the plot ahead. So you end up with characters who act as if they’re suffering from multiple personality disorder or, at the very least, have forgotten to take their meds. I know I’m supposed to be happy that the characters played by Megan Fox and Rachel Taylor are the smartest people in the movie, but when I’m constantly reminded that they are Really Really Hot, how can I be expected to notice anything else? (Note to Michael Bay: it’s kind of overkill to have your actors AND THE CAMERA giving elevator eyes to your actresses.)

The plot’s flat-out confusing, which is really a depressing thing to admit for someone with a college education. I’m still not sure if The Cube/Allspark was supposed to bring life back to Cybertron, give ultimate power to whichever robot contingency captured it, or make julienne fries. Plus, Transformers seems to borrow elements from several other (better) movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Independence Day, Signs, Men In Black, and Terminator 2. (credit where credit is due: the alternate explanation for Hoover Dam was original and clever.)

But I could leave all my reservations aside if the action sequences rocked. And they didn’t.

Look, I’m 32 years old now. But I own an Xbox that gets regular use. On my desk is a Flash action figure along with several plastic miniature ninjas. To my right is a James Bond calendar. On my DVD shelf, along with some high-brow picks, are genre movies and shows like Raiders, Buffy, Star Wars, Goonies, The Incredibles, Superman and many Dude Classics like Old School, Tombstone, Swingers, and almost every Kevin Smith film. In short, though I’ve grown up, I still enjoy things that are the province of people half my age. I want – nay, I long – to see giant robots fight each other, turn into very fast cars and then turn back into robots again before throwing each other into buildings throughout downtown Los Angeles. But Michael Bay couldn’t even give us a final well-staged action sequence that brought the dreams of every 14 year-old in the 1980s to life. Instead, he gave us muddled set pieces with characters so badly drawn that when one of the Autobots dies, we don’t even care (I’m still not entirely sure who bites it and neither does Optimus Prime as he intones “We lost a comrade today, but gained many others.” Way to shed a tear, bro. I know he’s a robot but damn, that’s some cold shit.)

So I don’t need to be told that I’m too old to appreciate this film or that my expectations were way too high. My expectations were pretty low, and Bay managed to subvert them by flubbing the basics. I’m all for explosions, as long as I know and care about what’s exploding.

Saturday in the park, a man selling ice cream

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I’ve been doing some writing in Time Out Chicago recently. This week, I contributed to an article in TOC‘s ice cream issue, now on-sale at local newsstands, but also available on the Interwebs. The piece is here (last item), complete with a stunningly handsome picture of yours truly. I walked around Rogers Park, Edgewater and Andersonville selling paletas and other ice cream treats. How did I do? Well, you’ll just have to click on the link.

Also in this week’s issue, we have a Web-only feature that lets our readers choose their favorite ice cream treat from the places we reviewed in this issue. Definitely worth checking out because it’s very pretty. Keep up with the results on the TOC blog.

And finally, I wrote the third item for this article on the history of Chicago’s parks. If you haven’t had a chance to check out these nifty TOC Google maps detailing everything there is to do in the city parks, or the many attractions of Milwaukee, you really should.

I do hope you’ve made the TOC blog a regular part of your day. I write occasional posts there, and you also get insightful pieces like this one on the whole “crush on Obama” phenomenon from our sex and relationships writer, Debby Herbenick.

Finally – and this is completely free of all self-promotion – I’ve got my money on Wes Craven in this fight.

Oblivious Living Part 1.10 "Guilty" by Classix Noveaux

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MP3 – “Guilty” by Classix Nouveaux
Lyrics – “Guilty” by Classix Nouveaux

Though most of the songs I’ve reviewed so far have their roots in Euro 80s pop, and we’re at the tail end of a rip-off renaissance of this time period, “Guilty” is the best candidate for “Song Most Likely To Make People Think It Was Recorded In The Last Few Years.” If the Editors covered this, I might start liking them again.

Classix Noveaux has a story that’s become a bit rote for me at this point, and I’m only ten songs into this little project: Band forms, band records song that becomes hit, band releases album, band’s album sells moderately well and band follows it up with second single that does the same, band tours various European countries that don’t have a whole lot else going for it in the early 1980s except for touring English synth bands, band ekes out two more albums that are hits in countries that aren’t the U.S. or the U.K, band breaks up.

But Classix Noveaux did have a few other things going for it. Though they formed via an ad in Melody Maker, like many other bands of their time, they boasted two members of X-Ray Spex (“Oh Bondage! Up Yours”). Also, unlike most of the other bands on this comp, their first single was not their highest-charting. That honor goes to “Is It A Dream.” Yeah, I didn’t know it either, but YouTube has it here. Between the scary looking lead singer, the weird guys following him around, the castle and the fencing, this is one of those videos that isn’t actually scary, but if you see it at a young age, it totally gives you the willies and will cause you to proclaim that it still freaks you out way into your 20s. Kinda like “Somebody’s Watching Me” by Rockwell. Seriously, what is with his dog? Even without the pig mask on, it’s weird. And that bathroom? The mailman in the diaper? Yeagh, I need to call my mother.

Not to belabor a point here, but someone in the comments of the video mentions Richard O’Brien, who played Riff in the film version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the resemblance can’t be coincidence. Especially since they’re performing in and around a castle that bears a remarkable similarity to the one in the film. Sans Transylvanians, of course. Although the Transylvanians seem to make an appearance in the video for “Guilty,” in which the lead singer looks like what happens if you cross Marilyn Manson with Judas Priest’s Rob Halford (post-gay revelation).

Anyway, why “Is It A Dream” charted higher is a mystery to me because “Guilty” rules.
Classix Noveaux’s sound is probably best described as goth-punk and you’d have trouble convincing me that there’s a better example of it here. This is another somebody done somebody wrong song, and the singer’s clearly to blame. Yet there’s still defiant whining to be done (“I wonder why you haven’t the time for/The reasons why”). Bring aggro hasn’t seemed to work for angry-boy bands so most of them have turned to being pissy over loud guitars. So it’s refreshing to remember pomposity used to have a nice beat you could dance to. Also, if the writer of “Betty Davis Eyes” didn’t steal its shimmering guitar/keyboard sound from this song, I will eat a gym sock.

But what’s with the name? It is supposed to mean the band was destined to be a new classic, like those really lame movies they show on TNT that we’re all supposed to think are really good, even though many of them star Kevin Costner? See, this why no 80s bands are around anymore: hubris.