Your Sunday Squirrel

I spent the day - the entire day - putting up Christmas decorations at my parents' house up in the sticks. This involved retrieving all manner of Xmas devices from underneath their house, going through everything, checking to see if the lights still worked (a lot of them didn't), putting them up and connecting them with a power source via a bizarre network of extension cords. And then I had to put up two fake Christmas trees in the house. So yes, it took a long time. My sister and nephews were no help at all, but that was nothing unusual. I left before it got fully dark, but I'm thinking that they've got a full-on winter wonderland-thing going on up there. Winnuh. Wunnuh. Lan. Damn straight. It's nice doing all that work for my folks, but I always forget that I'll also have to take all that stuff down in a month.

Enjoy today's squirrel.

Let's Have a Picture That Maybe Features Some Kind of Construction Crane

The people get what the people want:

This is 2nd & Bell from 2nd & Battery. This crane is not impressive by any means, but it's all we've got!

Coming Soon to the Moore!

Well, the Temptations and the Four Tops canceled tonight and that's too bad. Why did they cancel? Maybe they realized that their groups contained no original members. Not only that, but their replacement members have been replaced many times over. And it made them sad, so they called off the show. The end. OK, so this is what we have to look forward to. I'll admit it, I hate KMTT (or "the Mountain" as it's know around here), but it's a very important radio station, because it plays almost all the music I don't want to hear. If ever I'm confused about music that I don't want to hear, say the new John Mayer single or similar, I'll tune into the Mountain and if they're playing it, then I'm positive I'll dislike it. See how that works? So I'm pretty sure that if these three singer-songwriter have been played or even mentioned on KMTT, I'm nearly positive I'll dislike them. But you're welcome to go to the show. Feel free to sit quietly in your seat for the entire performance, sway slightly during tunes and applaud politely when they're done. In other words, you can be part of a 21st-century rock audience.

After Hours

Gerry Mulligan. Bernie's Tune

Here's Gerry and his guys on Italian TV again. This is really a dynamite performance. Everybody sounds good, but, truth be told, I'd rather not look at Jon Eardley playing trumpet. Just watch and you'll see what I mean. It ain't pleasant. My little jazz combo once did a version of this number. It was easily our worst tune. I don't know what went wrong. Everybody got lost all the time and from start to finish. It was pure disaster. Well, at least we played it fast. I think I'd much rather hear Gerry and band play. They were much better than us.

Problem Solved!

A few weeks ago, I showed some awful bad graffiti that sprayed on the side of Cafe Zoe here in the 2nd & Blanchard vortex. I claimed that they worked fast at Zoe to eradicate scrawlings of this type. Wow, did they ever. In fact, they were on it so quickly that I forgot that the offending puffy-looking thing had even been there, so I neglected to mention it. Well, now I'm mentioning it and here's your proof:

That shade of brown isn't the most attractive in world history, but it's functional at least.

This ties into my ringing criticism of the Cristalla, because this seems to be a lesson they haven't learned. Zoe gets rid of all graffiti almost immediately. It gets tagged once every three months or so. But it seems that dumbass taggers are trying less and less often, because they know their inferior efforts are quickly going to be wiped out. Contrast that with the Cristalla. It's just accumulating there. So yeah, my building might be old and weird, but at least the guys at Cafe Zoe have the neighborhood figured out. The Cristalla hasn't yet learned that lesson.

After Hours

Marie Laforêt. Ivan, Boris et moi

Here's a fun little thing that very briefly features Serge Gainsbourg. This is what the French think Russian music sounds like. Well, aren't they just the cutest? Once again, somebody has gone to a lot of trouble to build the set and choreograph the backup dancers and again, it would have been lost to time if not for the YouTube. Yes, it's a little cheesy, but many worthwhile things are. Since I'm a little under the weather, I'll leave it at that and go enjoy my sore throat.

Weep, O Creature of Eye Guy!

I know that Eye Guy has used a variety of paints, markers and whatnot, but this is indeed new territory. Folks, welcome to water-soluble country!

This is at 4th & Wall. With all the rain we've gotten of late, I'd be surprised if it was still there. I'm thinking that his choice of markers was a mistake and not an intentional concession of his creation to the elements. No Eye Guy, you haven't reached that sublime level yet. It was a boo-boo on your part. I'll tell you what I like, though. It's this from 4th & Cedar:

Isn't that sort of interesting? And it's nice that he didn't draw it on everything single one of those anti-skater things. I approve of that. It just has so much more going for it than stuff by other dumbass taggers.

After Hours

Sylvie Vartan. Buonasera, buonasera

Here's Sylvie singing in Italian for some kind of very elaborate TV special. Somebody went through an awful lot of trouble to put this scene together. I mean, it's absurdly well staged. It borders on the surreal. The tune isn't bad either. I don't speak Italian, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with saying "good evening" a lot. The strange thing is that despite the overall good quality of this production, it seems completely lost to time. Nobody in Italy says, "Hey Giuseppe, do you remember that TV show with Sylvie Vartan on it from the late sixties? You don't?? Eh, whatsamattayou, huh???" This is the single greatest thing about the YouTube. It brings all that stuff back. And although there's a whole lot of crap all over the site, it's still one of the greatest repositories of entertainment on this godforsaken planet.

And It Continues...

I didn't think that my dire prediction of more and more and more tagging on the Cristalla would come to pass so quickly, but things happen when they happen. Here is the latest addition:


Yes, this dumbass tagger was in such need to express himself in spray paint and the drab gray south wall simply would not do, so now the facade of the building is fair game. I'm all for it. Dumbass taggers, have at it! The Cristalla management doesn't care. I mean, they've already conceded the entire south wall of their building to you. Anything you put up stays up, so why not start working the front of the place?

It seems that Cristalla still doesn't understand that graffiti accumulates. If they're that dim, then the place deserves to have dumbass tags going up on all 24 stories.

McGuire Scaffold-Watch! Week: ???? + 33

It will never end. By the time the dwarf army finishes bolting and spackling all the McGuire's problem areas, other defects will come to the fore. And when those are corrected, the original problem areas will once again require attention. That's how it works. I had a comment last week that said this repair process started some three years ago. I can believe that. The scaffold is a relatively recent addition; it's been up almost a year, but it'll be up for quite a while, since there are scads of things to fix. And the dwarfs' tiny hands can only heal so many during the work day. Like I said, it's never gonna end.