Untitled

Another gem from David Getsy:
“Readers are like sheep, you have to lead them away from the wolves, lead them away from the cliffs, and towards the gooooood … green … grass”

[Read more →]

The Rat City float in the 2008 North Halsted Halloween Parad
Photograph courtesy of Ben Fain.

[Read more →]

Now… I know post offices are BAD NEWS. In general, all around the world, they are havens of bureaucratic bungles and profoundly inefficient processes. They are, almost always THE PITS. And in Chicago, you get to multiply that by 10. THE PITS x 10. It’s actually pretty hilarious how bad they are. It’s like I’m [...]

[Read more →]

A friend of mine found this interesting blog on “architectural conjecture, urban speculation, landscape futures” with some very interesting posts about experimental building projects. The blog is authored by Geoff Manaugh, senior editor of Dwell magazine. He was recently in Chicago for the Chicago Humanities Festival where he spoke at “Offshoring Audacity,” and “Burnham 2.0“

[Read more →]

Famous people are funny at election time. I just got this email from Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor. Since the last time I got genuinely excited about Nine Inch Nails I was a black-nail-polish donning teen, I’m not sure this will effect my (already cast) vote. But I’m sharing the love anyhow. The wording is [...]

[Read more →]

I saw the Mattress Bunny in Logan Square.

What is it? Well, Lucia Fabio and Robert Andrew Mueller decided to make a 9 foot tall rabbit, constructed from mattresses.
Here is their blog about it.
The work is being exhibited in a Logan Square shop window (formerly Grace’s Furniture) as part of a project by Lynn Stevens, The [...]

[Read more →]

Last night Tom Wolfe spoke at the Winter Garden in the Chicago Public Library, in conversation with journalist Carol Marin. The interview was recorded for television, and for the CPL’s audio-visual archives. The event was associated with the fact that Wolfe’s The Right Stuff has been selected as the Fall book for the “one [...]

[Read more →]

NEW YORKER SPOILER ALERT
Last night David Sedaris spoke at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago, to a packed audience. He read recent stories, diary entries, unpublished work, and a little George Saunders. It goes without saying that the event was bittersweet and frankly, hilarious… and it would be a disservice to Sedaris to recount his wonderful [...]

[Read more →]

Two days ago, when getting out of the shower, I remembered how to make weird duck-quacking noises with the side of my mouth. This is pretty exciting because I haven’t been able to make these quacking sounds for about 20 years (and I’m 25) and suddenly I know how to do it again.
Does anyone have [...]

[Read more →]

Jesse officially promises to avoid screenshots for at least the next 20 blog posts.

[Read more →]

A work colleague sent me this Chicago Tribune link, an old one, from 2006, it’s a Getty picture of a giant rabbit and its breeder. I love this picture so much, I’ve now made it my mission to copy and paste it everywhere. Since I’m probably facing copyright issues, I’ve uploaded the image IN CONTEXT [...]

[Read more →]

Bankruptcy aint no thing….
Owner of the Chicago Reader, Tampa-based Creative Loafing, filed for bankruptcy recently, but says don’t worry, the Reader will be on the stands, as usual, on Thursday. According to Creative Loafing CEO (as quoted on Chicago Public Radio), Ben Eason, no one should be troubled: “All the sort of business pieces of [...]

[Read more →]

I don’t make it a habit of posting press releases on this blog, but this sound entertaining - a film screening on Friday, presenting Lee Kazimir’s documentary about his journey - by foot - across Europe. Blisters in sympathy, anyone?
_________________________________________________________________________
FILM ABOUT CHICAGOAN’S WALK ACROSS EUROPE HAS FIRST LOCAL SCREENING ON FRIDAY, 9/26/08
More Shoes
Friday, September [...]

[Read more →]

I’d like to put forth a number of questions about the concept of the “Artist talk” - to see what the general feeling is about such a thing. I think there are a number of problems in terms of expectations and communications with these sorts of public lectures … of course there are hundreds of [...]

[Read more →]

Overly enthusiastic people are hard to handle. Particularly when they attack you from the back, patting you roughly on the shoulder and saying
“THAT DRESS! IT’S GORGEOUS! THAT MUSTARD COLOR IS DIVINE! … BUT OH NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT HIDEOUS ORANGE PURSE! IT SPOILS THE WHOLE OUTFIT!” [...]

[Read more →]

This blog is appropriately titled This Photo Sucks, and it discusses all those bad photos you can find on the Internet. It might be a short, undeveloped little blog, but the idea has so much potential. I’m loving it.

[Read more →]

I wanted to express my sadness at the death of David Foster Wallace - but I don’t want to be overly effusive with cliché and soppy proclamations, as I don’t think he would have approved.
Instead I will forward you on - if you’re interested, - to the appraisal of Wallace by Michiko Kakutani in the [...]

[Read more →]

Here is a website that has been set up to help coordinate relief efforts for Gulf Coast residents affected by Hurricane Gustav.
Also, I just received this update from the non-profit group Common Ground about current conditions:
9/1 - 2:00 pm CST
Despite water sloshing over the west side of the Industrial Canal wall, the Corps of [...]

[Read more →]

A colleague of mine at F Newsmagazine recently found this curious and alarming bit of information — and it’s such a shocking and bizarre story that I feel I have to share it here. This information originally came from the American Journal of Public Health, though at this point my source is via the Center [...]

[Read more →]

Northwestern University, Evanston… this photo was captured in the rain on Friday 22 August 2008. I know Chicago has THE LAKE so no one is too worried about excess water consumption.
But sometimes I see things that make me, a water-saving obsessed Australian, weep.
Is the fresh-water goodness of Lake Michigan really a never ending resource? Not [...]

[Read more →]

I found out about CHIRP: Chicago Independent Radio Project at the recent Wicker Park Festival, ostensibly because I went up to their table to grab a freebie bottle opener. But any independent radio action is worth knowing about, so I’m finding out a little more:
Chirp is planning to launch an online radio station this fall, [...]

[Read more →]

An article on August 20 in the Chicago Sun Times suggested that Chicago Tribune Co-Chairman and media mogul Sam Zell was considering selling the Tribune Building to a residential developer (not simply arrange a sale-leaseback deal, which was the former plan). Apparently about 1/3 of the building is empty presently, and as the Chicago Tribune [...]

[Read more →]

The next Chicago Critical Mass is on Friday, August 29, starting at 5.30 p.m. at Daley Plaza. I’m going. You should come too. Does anyone know any skilled web developers who would like to spare some time to fix up Chicago Critical Mass’ website? It needs a makeover.
Happy Friday!
- Jesse Stein (photo of April 2008 [...]

[Read more →]

Photograph taken by John Deal, for Strange Maps http://strangemaps.wordpress.com

One of my all-time favorite blogs, Strange Maps, has recently run a post about TV set news background maps-of-the-world, and how truly awful they can be. I’m so enamored by this blog, and by this particularly delightful post, that I am doing the worst thing a blogger [...]

[Read more →]

If you’re missing the street art of Brendan Scanlon (aka Solve), there are a bunch of Flickr photo-streams that have recorded much of his work, including a shrine to Solve that was at the corner of Grand and Milwaukee (the shrine is currently destroyed - pulled off and/or over-painted with brown paint - but it [...]

[Read more →]

A pattern is beginning to emerge…

[Read more →]

Here are a few shots and a little footage from Lollapalooza day 1, August 1 2008.

Stephen Malkmus appears to have a headache

Kele Okereke (Bloc Party) dons some Obama support, and is one of the many lead singers to say “Um. We’re from England…”
This has got to be the first time that I’d heard a [...]

[Read more →]

In 2002, in my freshman year of college, I wrote a particularly tasteless list of “People Who Ought to be Dead by Now” which was a vague reference to Christopher Isherwood’s nonsense poems “People One Ought to Know.” My list was published in a limited edition zine called The Little Fish, and notwithstanding the print-run [...]

[Read more →]

Some guy from Utah called Eric Salsbery takes badly executed photographs of automobile logos - and puts them on his blog. I never paid much attention to automobile logos, but there I’m sure they are ripe for iconological study, if such things haven’t already been written. Firstly: there is the predominance of the streamlined art [...]

[Read more →]

Yep, you read that right. August 1 to 3, 2008: the Windy City Ukulele Festival is twanging into gear at the Tiki Terrace.Never mind my three–decimal-figure Lolla tickets, the sheer number of exclamation points in this press release has convinced me that this is the PLACE TO BE in two weekends time. Here is an [...]

[Read more →]