Night of the Four Sticks

I think we all know what the Four Sticks Curse is by now...I just want to get it over with.

Await Further Instructions

The first illustration came up during conversation at Clarke's. The rest fell into place. The Polish boob exam was sent to me by Turek up in Anchorage. This is how we blow our money on stamps.

Sledgehammers and Ice Picks

This is how I remember the night the Berlin Wall was torn down, twenty years back. Times past. Most of you know about the car that hit me in March of 89, and the night of the Wall coming down had me again at Holy Cross Hospital. Sometime in October, the plates holding together what was left of the bones in my left forearm broke in half, and after a few days, well, the second photo tells you what my arm looked like. I, of course, took the photo of my arm because everyone else was creeped out. (Nothing new there, even now.)

So there I was, my left arm feeling like it was submerged in molten goo. The television was on, I was doped up on Demerol every two hours and Tylenol#3 every hour, and so I had to be told--and I am not making this up--that I was watching Tom Brokaw reporting and NOT Arnie Becker on L.A. LAW. I do not remember the wall being torn down, nor do I remember Noriega and the invasion of Panama deal. I was glad when 1989 was over, and I'm glad that that wall stayed down.

Creeple People Like You & Me

I know my content has been low, nothing weird going on in my life, just coasting along away from the keyboard. Here's one of the posts I had saved up for before Hallowe'en. And somehow I had thought that Vac-U-Form was another version of the Creeple People, but they are two different brands. Just like Mercurochrome (however its spelled), I can still smell that melting plastic in the various molds. My older cousin had one of these things back when I lived on Crystal Street. And I never once burned myself. Or tried to eat a fake tongue (I'd have been five at the time.) Things just aren't the same anymore. Over the summer, one of my nieces gave me a dinosaur foot that she grew in a cup of water. I'll admit, it looked cool for about a day. Then it started shrinking and hardening. It fell behind my bookshelf and likely looks like a molecule from the H1N1 virus by now. Can't make the cool things like Creeple People anymore. No better cheap thrill than putting an eyeball in an Easy-Bake oven.

The Best Kept Secret In Chicago

My 700th post, for those keeping track. You all everybody know I love me my postcards. There's a place I buy them at, but its, well, a porn shop. A huge, giant, ridiculously big porn shop. But in the front they sell VHS tapes, newspapers, and postcards at 5 for a buck. The heading here is from the side of the building, right there at 77th & Cicero, a square brown box between an Arby's and the Saratoga Motel. Well, I bought 50 postcards, holy crap, right? But I still had to stand in line behind those renting or buying videos and those buying, well, gifts of some sort. I was able to get multiple cards of those shown and many others, but there was only one of the creepy dolls at the bottom. So I'm keeping that one for myself.

Found this great painting by the Hildebrandt Brothers over the weekend. Can't really add to it, they've done great work for decades now, and I know several artists, particularly Greg Horn, who cite them as inspiration. The best thing an artist or writer can hear, that they've passed something on to the next generation...

Halloween Remnants 2009

I went to a party last night with Bart and Deb, my partner in crime at the printing plant and his wife. It was last minute, so I dressed as a cop, I picked up a cop shirt with an old emblem a decade ago, it is actually from the 8th District, my dad's old joint. It's very hard to find shirts without the emblem torn off nowadays. Enough of that. I ended up screwing around with the camera as I waited, Bart had called twice about a delay. I love the effect on the web camera that has the swamp water. No way was I going to bring the baton, though. Not the hollow kind cops have now, the old ones were no nonsense. Two words described it, and you'd likely hear one of them in just about any rap song that need a rhyme for trigger. Its faded away from the decades of various people handling it, but at one time you could still see bloodstains courtesy of the Democratic convention of 1968.