Monday February 27, 2012

With the awards season having just ended I’d be remiss if I didn’t list a few everyday categories for awards I’d like to give out someday in the real world. Let’s just call these, THE REALLIES.

And to Really goes to. . .

BEST EDITING of curse words when they screw up your order at the drive-through window.

BEST SHORT SUBJECT trying to reach anything on the top shelf of the closet.

ANIMATION. Putting on that happy face when receiving a fruitcake as a Christmas gift.

BEST ADAPTATION of the specific instructions given by a stranger on how to get somewhere.

CHOREOGRAPHY (of any person over 60) at the last wedding reception you attended interpreting the waltz, tango, polka, box step or the funky chicken.

COSTUME DESIGN of the female hairdresser in zebra print, animal print, paisley and stripes who stands closest to the store front window of the neighborhood hair salon.

SET DECORATION for first apartments using bean bag chairs for living room furniture and huge industrial wire spools as coffee tables.

ORIGINAL SCORE of a mega-friendly golf game where copious Mulligans are awarded between friends and crappy players who are friends.

BEST PERFORMANCE by a mini mart or convenience store ringer trying to convince you to buy the two candy bars for the price of one with your purchase.

BEST PERFORMANCE (on intercom) by a gas station attendant trying to talk a customer through paying with their debit card at the pump.

BEST PERFORMANCE by someone doing 85 mph in a 65 mph zone on the Interstate to the trooper that nailed him.

BEST PICTURE Photoshopped. (Any digital photo or photoscan of yourself or any family member or friend you altered and sent back to them as a joke.)

There you have it. The “real life” Oscars or Reallies, I’d like to give out. Until next year, Hurray for Hollywood!

Have a great week all!

MJC

02/27/12

Word count is 322 and this is your 889th post.

 

Wednesday February 22, 2012

There was no tearful send-off, no densely populated goodbye party. Some received no severance package at all during “The Bubble of 2008.” There was not one major reason cited nor could the experts articulate or elucidate them specifically, precisely or with any true cohesion and conviction among them explaining The Bubble of 2008. It was, by all accounts, inevitable and all the signs were there for it to have occurred, this bubble of 2008.

Families vacated and foreclosed upon homes, big business stripped their employee roster near bare giving only the privileged few their golden parachute, some received only a sturdy handshake, some given nothing at all – and sent on their way – when pink slips were handed out during debacle universally called – by newspaper and electronic media reporters: The Bubble of 2008.

The Dow swung high and low making analysts sea-sick from the sea-saw action of the investment and economic landscape. “Too volatile, too volatile,” some opined. Gas, at the closest busy street intersection near my apartment hovered around $4.95 a gallon for most of the end of Summer and into the Fall of 2008. No one could explain the erratic and whiplash-like change in direction of markets and prices not to mention the emotional roller-coaster set upon human being’s lives.

Four years later, now, so many lives seem to have been touched by The Bubble. Why it’s even called The Bubble no one can explain. Brevity? Clarity? For lack of a better word? Hundreds of thousands of people effected by this terrible economic thing (this prism-like, transparent, lighter than air, floating, round object of an analogy) stand wondering how something so disruptive to their economic fate, lives and pocketbook can be marginalized to the point of calling it a “bubble.”

Enter the Occupy Movement. No one, not even the very people protesting can say for sure what the contents of their protest truly is. Is it any wonder? How do you describe the whys and wherefores of the last four years economically to those who lost their homes? Their jobs? Their life savings? Their personal confidence and financial integrity in the eyes of the major lending institutions? Get all these people in the same room and ask them to define how that feels. To define a purpose for their protestation. What would that be in light of all that?

They might collectively say, “We want to be heard. We want to share our pain. The economy abandoned us.” Is it any wonder? Why does everyone say that The Occupy Movement needs to be clear as to what they are protesting? Isn’t it enough that generally speaking, it’s a response? Isn’t it enough they are exercising their freedom? Isn’t it enough most people fortunate enough not to have been effected by The Bubble hold the protestors in low regard, treat them with much disdain and simply do not understand why they are not out looking for jobs? Perhaps it’s enough. Perhaps not.

What would be nice is for someone to explain how everything fell out of bed four years ago and what we can now do to prevent that from happening again so profoundly across economic lines ever again. What would also be nice is for the SEC and CFTC and other relevant governing bodies affiliated with lending and investment institutions and the various economic gurus to explain how the whole magilla of The Bubble came to be in a language everyone can understand.

Was it computer trading run amuck? Too many resources allocated the the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars? What was it actually? If and when we get that specific information, I bet the Occupy Movement can then say, “That’s what we’re pissed off about.”

The Bubble.Come on! The Stock Market Crash of 1929. At least that nomenclature describes that whole mess with an appropriate metaphor – ~C~R~A~S~H~ – which also elicits an appropriate emotional response. I move we minimize and marginalize the next economic catastrophe even further than we did by calling the events of October of 2008 a bubble, by calling the next one The Blip, The Downtick or The Hiccup. Take your pick. I mean if we’re going to fool ourselves, let’s fool ourselves right.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Happy mid-week Wednesday everyone!

MJC

02/22/12

This is your 888th published post and contains 733 words.

 

Monday February 20, 2012

What Price Fame?

For years we’ve been treated to photographs and images of movie and rock stars in their personal lives. The people who make it their life’s calling to snap those photos and images are called paparazzi. We’ve also been offered parodies of the proverbial gonzo lives and lifestyles of these rich and famous stars in movies like, A Star Is Born and in television shows like Saturday Night Live. (Who remembers Gilda Radner playing the drugged out Candy Slice and Bill Murray as the enabling record company executive Jerry Aldini offering everyone “a little tootsky for the snootsky”?)

And in the wake of another celebrity death it would be easy to make the intuitive leap that it’s another sad, drug related death (like Marilyn, Morrison, Hendrix, Joplin and Michael; the list goes on and on) – but was it really? Was Whitney Houston’s death really another one of these superstar celebrity drug related deaths? How do we know for sure? If and when we do find out for sure from the toxicology reports from her autopsy – what about it all, then?

I found an online article that stated that now, with social networking sites on the Internet and more celebrities posting status blurbs on them, a fan’s grief is heightened and magnified. Fans may feel themselves closer to the celebrity on a face to face basis now – having never met or even knowing the actual celebrity personally – with the advent of Twitter and Facebook status updates.

We’re all faced with demons, I imagine, and a lot in life that can seem like a heavy burden to bear but isn’t the aforementioned article kind of what the whole Princess Diana saga was about? Not drugs per se but the clashing and coming too close to the celebrity themselves? Trying to know too much, take the photo of, the getting too close?

Yes photos emerged of Whitney’s lifestyle choices, peculiar behavior and images depicting her in public just living her life in the last twenty years. A tremendous amount of photographic documentation – it’s not all been pretty. I don’t believe Whitney Houston ever claimed to be a role model for her own generation or future generations; but she should have been one, perhaps. Perhaps not. The fact that the average person unconnected to fame and fortune can have opinions based on the photos and images we’re shown lends itself to how people are drawn to, curious about celebrity, fame and fortune. Our interest speaks volumes.

It was the same as in the days of Marilyn Monroe as it was prior to Marilyn. And since. Celebrity fandom loses itself in the razmataz and bright lights of Hollywood success. It takes us all away from the normalcy and mundane balanities of living day to day. Maybe this indeed, is, in fact the very struggle these celebrities surrender themselves to? Being too close to their own fame. Being a “star.” Not to undermine the seriousness of what seems like an epidemic, I’m just saying celebrity, fame, fortune, recognition and success on that kind of level is just as seductive to the person living through it as it is for strangers and fans alike.

Then there are those who have no problem dealing – but you never hear much from them or about them.

The reaction to celebrity death – that perhaps is shrouded in drug related mystery – is usually the same – be it from strangers or their own families. “If we could have just done or said or known something about how they were feeling, what they were actually thinking. If perhaps there was something, somehow, some someone who could have assuaged their fears, intervened, or just simple loved them enough. If we could have loved them enough, made them understand somehow. . .” The time to love somebody is not when they are at their lowest. The time to love someone is essentially something you must do every single day – with consistency. I truly believe that’s key! (And if you throw in a cheeseburger every once in a while, that’s not a bad thing either.)

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Happy Monday and have a great week ahead, folks.

RIP Whitney; you’re finally at peace.

MJC

This is your 887th post and contains 710 words.

 

Wednesday February 8, 2012

I woke this past Sunday afternoon with this image in my head from a dream: an ornately decorated, mounted by a taxidermist, Argentinian buffalo head. I don’t know if such a thing exists. In my dream, it was hanging on the wall of some ex-boss of mine. Why someone would “decorate” an Argentinian buffalo head is beyond me, given, again, if such a thing exists. Anyways, It got me to thinking, this image, when I had awoken, as to whether I should try and go back to sleep or not and also all the chachkies, knick-knacks and brick-a-bracs we hold on to as we go through life came to mind. Now mind you, chachkies, knick-knacks and brick-a-bracs are not a very masculine thing to admit to having. But be that as it may, I think we all carry items of meaning and personal importance to us, with us throughout our lives and are hard pressed from time to time as to whether we should keep them or let them go.

The very last thing I remember doing when I moved out of my last apartment Halloween of 2001, was turn around and snap a few pictures of these two overflowing dumpsters. Most, if not all of the contents in them belonged to me. My discards from the move. As I got into my car with my last belongings and sat next to my Dad (God rest his soul), he asked me, “Sonny, why do you need a picture of that?” And to be honest, to this day, I’m not sure why I did, but I know how it felt to drive off to my new apartment having made the decision to discard the things I did. It was bittersweet.

Bitter because some of my old childhood journals, memories, perhaps even some photo albums, too, and enough movies and Tonight Shows (with Johnny Carson) recorded on VHS tape to choke a horse – was amid all that garbage. Sweet because I had made some tough personal choices in leaving a lot of stuff behind I knew I’d never use again. A lot of that stuff was damaged from just being in my assigned locker down in the basement of the building from a cracked water pipe that just happened to be above all my stuff in there. Incidentally, the owner did put a plastic tarp down when he repaired the pipe, but it wasn’t enough to actually save my stuff. To some it may have seemed like clutter, but to me, it was “my stuff.”

Would I like to have some of these things around me now to touch and feel and to look at for the personally intrinsic value and place they had in my life? Oh sure, why not? Was it necessary to bring the damaged and dried college assignments, journals, saved text books,, etc. to my new apartment? Was it necessary to have a 25 year old HBO or Showtime, Billy Crystal Special? (Most of my VHS collection was not part of the stuff that was water damaged.) Was it necessary to discard old clothing that I knew I’d never fit into again? Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

But all these things were sufficient for the time I had them.

P.S. Spring cleaning’s just around the corner. . . .

MJC
02/08/12

Happy mid-week Wednesday, folks!

Word count: 547, post # 886. Yahoo!

 

Monday February 6, 2012

I normally don’t weigh in on sex, politics or sports in this blog, but this morning, I must. On sports. Specifically,
last night’s Super Bowl.

It’s interesting to me, this controversy I was able to access MOMENTS after Super Bowl and it had nothing to do with M.I.A. flipping the television cameras the proverbial bird. It has everything to do with Ahmad Bradshaw falling into the Patriots end zone to put the Giants ahead in the last minute of play yesterday. It’s bad enough by the time most people were going to bed (I work third shift), the fallout had begun. Entertainment reporters focused on the “bird”, sports writers focused on Bradshaw. Is anyone surprised? Really? Seriously? Before I focus on the sports snafu or alleged snafu, what of this whole entertainment snafu? Madonna enlists others, and by others, I mean, human beings who are in the music industry to appear on stage with her at probably the largest televised audience happening once a year. Of course someone’s going to smile wider, make a stupid face, make bunny ears with the victory sign over someone else’s head or in this case “flip the bird.” It’s human nature to do so isn’t it?

I do it. In group pictures. Maybe that’s why no one wants to be in a photograph with me.

And the other controversy stemming from that moment was the use of an expletive in the lyrics almost simultaneously as the bird flip. The media is so wrapped up with the one, they’re forgetting about the other or they mention the curse word as if that were the shocking thing and not the bird flip. It doesn’t matter that all last week in interviews Madonna SAID she would give us a straight show, no controversy, it’s the frog and the scorpion, folks. It’s in her nature. From the beginning of her pop culture career in music, we knew, didn’t we? So don’t act surprised.

Now this whole running the clock down thing with Manning and Bradshaw. You’re telling me, you’re squatted over the end zone, in a Super Bowl game having just found the slot, caught the ball and as you turn around, catch and your quarterback screams, “Don’t score! Don’t score!”, you’re going to be able to process that directive mid-fall backwards? And this, to run down the clock so that Tom Brady and the Patriots can’t score in the less than minute of play there is left to play? Really? Seriously? I know some commodity types who couldn’t process that information that fast, so come on, New York fans! Try to be happy that TD put you ahead when it did and lead to your victory, ok?

Jonathon Brandmeier (WGN-AM, Chicago) interviewed Tim Wrightman (tight end, Chicago Bears, 1985-1986, Super Bowl player, the year the Bears won Super Bowl XX)  this morning. In the final minutes of his 5:30 – 9am radio show Brandmeier asked Wrightman what he would have done in Bradshaw’s place yesterday. Would he have been able to process the not scoring on 3rd down with 5 yards needed for a first down being that close to the end zone while essentially squatting over it backwards, off balance, while your quarterback is telling you not to score? (Which incidentally, will probably be, along with the most controversial play of the game, but, too, the most talked about, analyzed and over-analyzed play from now until kingdom come!) Wrightman’s response to Brandmeier’s query was the perfect answer for Chicago Bear fans.

“I would have handed the ball off to Sweetness (Walter Payton), he would have gotten his Super Bowl touchdown that he never got and history would have been changed forever,” or words very close to these which begs the question – particularly if you’re a science fiction fan or a fan of the the movie, Back to the Future. Because that play from last night did not happen in Super Bowl XX and Walter did not get his Super Bowl touchdown as Wrightman intimated, history WAS changed and we are indeed living in some strange alternate universe. I want to see what that timeline would have been like. And I want to see it now! Had Sweetness gotten that Super Bowl touchdown, that truly and indeed, in all other ways imaginable – would have been the perfect Super Bowl!

That is all.

MJC

Word count: 696 +/-, post # 885

P.S. Writers Note: David Tyree was misidentified in this post. Ahmad Bradshaw was the correct receiver.

 

Thursday February 2, 2012

There is one thing, at 49 years of age, I can say I regret. However I can only say I regret it nominally. It has to do with what can only be described as a photographic family portrait. We weren’t one of those families who did that kind of thing, and so, we didn’t do it every couple of years either. Nor did we send family portraits at Christmastime that we had posed for at Sears or Edward Fox Studios (an area photographer). Don’t get me wrong, we have photos. Scads and scads of them. And some day when I am at Mom’s again, I will ask her to break out the piles and piles of family photos albums so that we can peruse our photographic family history.

We each, my brother, sister and I, dressed in our First Holy Communion suits, were driven to an area studio and photographed in various cherubic poses, clasping a prayer booklet between our praying hands – and other individual portraits were taken, again, earlier still with unsuccessful results when we three were very young: one of us would not stop crying (coughmysistercough). But the proverbial family portrait sitting eluded my family. Not that my parents thought that it was wrong. It more than likely was something they a) didn’t have time for, b) didn’t have the extra funds for, or c) bilaterally and subconsciously decided, “we see each other every day around the house why create and hang a ginormous picture of us all on the wall?”

Again, not that there’s anything wrong with that. No pronouncement or verbal discussion that we wouldn’t. We just didn’t.

Group shots of my family exist, thank God, but mostly taken at a particular event, some holiday or special occasion. Walking through some of the larger northside shopping areas and malls in the 1980s (Six Corners, The Brickyard, Harlem Irving), I must say some studios had cool looking portraits of families we didn’t know in their storefront windows all posed like the spokes of a bike, or with their family pet, or some other such pose; and I coveted that at the time. But now, in retrospect, I am glad we didn’t do one in red, checkerboard, button-down shirts or whatever the casual wear or formal wear was in the 1960s, 1970s or 80s.  Had we, we could look back and laugh, I bet. Hard. And now via a few websites in cyberspace so could others. . . .laugh. . .really, REALLY hard!

www.awkwardfamily.com
www.failfamily.com

All this having been said, there is an undeniable reverence and nostalgia in family portraits, each family to their own and if you’re lucky enough to have sat for such a photo, God bless you. Love them, save them, scan them, have them restored.

There are days when I truly regret not having been part of a formal sitting for a family portrait. Then there are days, someone sends me a picture from one of those aforementioned sites and you know, I’m glad we didn’t. Other days still, I’m more grateful for the impromptu ones.

Happy Thursday!
MJC
02/02/12

This post has 522 words and is post # 884.

 

Sunday January 22, 2012

I worked with a lot of characters in my twenty-four years at the Chicago Grain Exchange. No shortage of wheeler dealers there. If you asked some of these guys to give you a market, they’d make you one. Infrequently traded futures months? No problem! Uncommonly traded commodity spreads? No problem! Where will you do Oct. / March? They’d reply without hesitation, without a breath. Buy it 1.90, sell you at 2.10. Although some guys would suck in a huge breath, think and exhale with their cheeks puffed out, thinking, thinking. . . “Buy it a buck seventy, sell you twos.”

I wonder what some of these guys would say if I told them I couldn’t wait for the geese and duck season to start. That’s right, overnight at work, on the graveyard shift, I harkened back to the late winter / early spring of last year around the end of April where this female duck had taken squatter’s rights on the boat. (“Buy 40 degree temps, sell you 20s at 12 and a 1/4.”) I was thinking because it was so unseasonably warm this year that perhaps I’d see the miracle of nature again this year and I realized I was being impatient. March / April is pretty far away as of today’s date.

After all, we just had our second snowfall of the season in all actuality and winter is definitely not finished yet. But from my vantage point where I sit all night I can see the very place the female duck from last year laid her eggs and hatched a few, too. I know it’s a bit early to be thinking about it but I’ve got to wonder if I’ll be as tied up again as I was in the miracle of life as I was last year. (“April! Buy geese sell ducks at a quarter!”) The 2011 female duck. First living on the boat, waddling around, hiding from the green-headed male ducks (or drakes, perhaps) who were sowing their springtime wild oats – if memory serves me she had a clump of feathers missing from her head, the poor dear. (“Buy feathers, sell you a little knitted duck hat your mom crochets for a dollar! What’s the over under on how many ducklings hatch?”)

I took pictures, wrote and even told a whole mess of people about that spot I could see from where I sat last night, the spot the female moved to when she began laying her eggs. I feel bad about that, as if, each person making that walk from the pavillion to the boat would stop and check on her and draw about as much attention to her nest as I did. She was stalwart, steadfast in her instinct to stay atop that small group of eggs just as long as she could on a daily basis with the exception of finding food for herself I imagine, but she stayed; the pointing, the cmeres and come take a looks, the ohhs and ahhs notwithstanding: she did what mother ducks do. I just hope all the attention didn’t spook her.

I don’t know what caused the lack of baby ducks for this particular mama, I just know she was mauled and hiding for quite a while on the boat. After an eyewitness experience I had in just how drastic these drakes could be, I put two and two together and realized the missing clumps were from the males pinning the females down from the back with their ducks bills so that they could do the springtime duck mambo on the backs of these females. Better than You Tube or Facebook videos and better than Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel because I saw it with my own two eyes. (“Buy cable television, sell you the internet at 69! Sell it at 8”) Best education I ever received watching all this unfold from late March early April to June-ish of last year. The pain, the pathos! Better than All My Children! Just tremendous.

After having ultimately and sadly seen only 2 or 3 ducklings hatch from the dozen or so duck eggs, I saw, not long after that I saw another mama duckling swimming merrily upon the Fox River with somewhere between 7 to 9 ducklings following her in a group. How sorry I felt for the one who’s life I had a peek into during her mating, her pregnancy and her subsequent delivery. Once the last snows of the season begin to dwindle I wonder if I’ll see any of those female babies from last year using the boat as a safe haven, trying to evade the advances of the males who’ve matured also and watch them perhaps, sit upon their eggs. . .?

We shall see what we shall see. . . .

(“Buy the March duck eggs, sell you May ducklings @ the orders . . .”)

(Not that I’m a market player nor can I make you a market for anything you want, but definitely, without a doubt, I am, a character!)

Happy Playoff Sunday everyone!

MJC

Word Count: 824
This is your 883rd post.