Friday off

Today was a little rough. Someone the other day smashed my right rear car door, smearing it with their red paint, and then fled without leaving a note. I hate those people. This is the same as reaching into someone's wallet and extracting $500. After dealing with my insurance agency and determining that it would be better to just pay for it myself, I threw my bike on the back of the car and headed to the Arboretum where I pedaled in 90 degree heat for an hour. I go to Bridgeport tomorrow for some authentic tai chi. Looking forward to it.

Napping: the poor man's opera

LA Theatre Works

I've been periodically listening to LA Theatre Works, which produces radio plays. I've listened to Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, Shadowlands and a play about Frank Lloyd Wright called Work Song. Most recently, I listened to Top Secret, a play about the legal battle between the Washington Post and the Nixon Administration over the Pentagon Papers. Some of these have been pretty good.

I grew up with a weird bent toward radio drama and comedy. I've met people my age or younger who are hooked on old radio, and they're equally odd. I've since gone back and listened to several comedies only to discover that they were surprisingly bad. They did not trust America to get good humor and relied on some pretty hokey stuff. The format is good for drama, though, and some episodes of "Suspense" are positively terrifying. Radio leaves more to the imagination.

What easily breaks radio's fictional dream is awkward but necessary exposition to make up for not being able to see what the actors are physically doing and where they are. So a skillful weekly show like LA Theatre Works is most welcome to me. It uses great actors and focuses on some pretty interesting scripts, though Top Secret was more of a heavy handed re-enactment than a play. The ending to me was too obviously ripped from The Cain Mutiny in which the attorney who represents the heroes of the story then drunkenly admonishes them for being too delighted with their victory, warning them them of unconsidered consequences.

These things are great for the iPod and for playing in the car. Even if you have short commutes, like me, it's amazing how much time we spend in the car. You can get through an unabridged novel in a week or so.

coyote

There is a split second between experiencing a surprise and contemplating it when everything slows down and I am of one mind. When fishing, it's just as a living thing strikes the other end of my line. When driving it's when a Chevy Suburban does a 720 across four lanes of black ice right in front of me on the way to the Kansas City Airport. Since I am never of one mind, I relish these milliseconds of clarity perhaps more than most. This morning it was a coyote. A sly looking 35 pounds of sallow brown fur and teeth. Amy had told me there was one skulking around the other day, which may be why my own surprise on stepping out the front door with the dogs was so brief.

We followed him at a distance of 30 yards or so. He showed a disconcerting lack of concern over the suburbanite and his soft dogs. Crumley and Iris pulled on their leashes and showed hackles and all of that, but they were quiet about it. I don't know if their lack of usual bravado betrayed an uneasiness with actually catching up with a wild thing or if they were reverting a more primal silent running. Or maybe it was simply curiosity.

He finally slipped between two townhouses and we resumed our walk. Later as I ate half a grapefruit and read the Sun-Times, Crumley let out three booming barks and I looked up through the patio door to see the same coyote trotting through the backyard. It makes sense. They're resourceful and found everywhere from Alaska to South America to Central Park. The Western Suburbs has millions of rabbits and squirrels, and we're near multiple forest preserves. It was fairly early so it's possible he'd been out night hunting and had gotten far away from his den and was now attempting to find his way back. I know these townhouses all look exactly the same to me.

Another Good Friday

We took Friday to go downtown again this week. We started with lunch at Frontera Grill. If you get there about 20 minutes before they open at 11:30 a.m., you can get a table right away when they open. I had a duck that was to die for. Amy had pork tacos that were incredible. We've eaten at all three of Rick Bayless' restaurants located there--all astounding--but this is my favorite. I can eat that guy's food until I'm hospitalized.

We then went to the Field Museum, where they are celebrating the 10th anniversary of their Tyrannosaurus, Sue. I had been there another time for a fundraising ball, but I didn't realize how great the place was until Amy and I went yesterday. We took our time--which I normally hate to do--and saw just about every bit of the place. It's a very old school, Teddy Roosevelt natural history museum with thousands of mind blowing examples of taxidermy, much of it from the 19th century and early 20th. In fact, most of it seemed to be done before 1935, but they are so well preserved that they still look very much alive. I'll include a few here along with another of my choppy videos of the robot dinosaurs (which were actually very cool in person; they had motion detectors that allowed you to incense the robots).

Messing around

iPhone sucks in that it is really great. I love messing around with it. About the same time we paid a pound of flesh for the Canon, I paid about $4 for an iPhone app called Hipstimatic that takes prematurely aged pictures, complete with 70s flares, etc. It's fun. This first, as an example, is exactly how a bar used to look to me at about 2 a.m.. (It's actually at Piece in Wicker Park last week.) The next two I snapped while waiting for Amy to get ready for her friend Dorian's wedding. The last is one of infinite times I have annoyed my wife.

Arboretum and the end of my weekend

I don't really care for these steel root sculptures, but there is something Lovecraftian about them. Amy and I went to the Arboretum today and messed around for a bit before going to the mall in Oak Brook, which is my favorite. I played with the camera, and Amy was very patient. I really need to sign up for a camera class and begin figuring out the other 99.9999 percent of how this things works.