FRANKENSTEIN1959

Let's See what I Come Up With, 1st Post of 2010

2012-01-16T00:43:00.000-07:00

What better than to post my bikini skyline photo as well as ask the question about why there were so many dentists in LA years ago.

Retrievals: 003

2011-12-19T00:48:00.000-07:00

Three Frames: Sixteen

2011-12-17T23:18:00.000-07:00

Retreivals:002

2011-12-15T23:52:00.000-07:00

Retrievals:001

2011-12-13T23:42:00.000-07:00

Recently, I gave my battered old Dell to this fellow in Indiana and he did a data retrieval and I put everything on an external hard drive. You might recall an incident several years ago where I had a spasm and moved my Photos folder into someplace unknown, and I've slowly been sifting through the 7,000 photos (!), many of which I do have, but not the exact variation as shown here, such as Greg Loudon's 2000 shots by the el or the 2006 shots for the Fiends by Torchlight cover. The same for my niece Grace and the great Buddy the Mitch. I might put a few more of these posts up, we'll see.

Gone, Baby, Gone

2011-12-12T00:14:00.000-07:00

My Notebook: Gone, Baby, Gone 01 Mar 10-04 Dec 11

Never mind the stupidity in how I lost my commonplace book (a term I use because Karl Edward Wagner used it to describe his notebooks), it is gone. Left on the floor of the Jackson Street subway, 7:26 PM last Monday. I know this from a phone call I made, the number having been in the book. I had that thing filled up with sections of Proactive Contrition, several stories, everything has already been typed up, be it fragments or entire stories. And so it goes. The story of my owning the commonplace book now becomes the story of the next person reading the crazy thing. And likely looking over his shoulder as he waits for the Red Line at Jackson.

Three Frames: Thirteen

2011-12-11T00:38:00.000-07:00

Favorite Photos, My 1100th Post

2011-12-02T00:12:00.001-07:00

Three Frames: Twelve

2011-11-25T23:51:00.000-07:00

Three Frames: Eleven

2011-11-17T23:53:00.000-07:00

Three Frames: Ten

2011-11-12T23:26:00.000-07:00

2011-11-06T23:44:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I posted them, but they are still around.

#Occupy1968

2011-10-31T00:02:00.000-06:00

My father's police baton, blood and cracks courtesy of the 1968 Democratic Convention.

Three Frames: Nine

2011-10-15T00:52:00.000-06:00

Directly across the street from the retirement village. St. Mary's Cemetery. 89th & Pulaski.

50's Halloween THE HOLLYWOOD FLAMES Frankenstein's Den 1958

2011-10-07T01:29:00.000-06:00

Three Frames: Eight

2011-10-01T23:59:00.000-06:00

Three Frames: Seven

2011-09-21T23:38:00.000-06:00

Hurricane Irene [hd video]

2011-08-26T22:18:00.001-06:00

Hurricane Irene [hd video] a video by NASA Goddard Photo and Video on Flickr.

the eye of Irene opens

Three Frames: Six

2011-08-01T00:51:00.000-06:00

Three Frames: Five

2011-07-24T01:01:00.000-06:00

Three Frames: Four

2011-07-18T23:18:00.000-06:00

Notebook near DePaul University on the el tracks over three weeks and at least two rains.

Three Frames: Three

2011-07-15T00:08:00.000-06:00

The Frosted Mug at 115th & Pulaski, Chicago. Demolished 2009

Three Frames: Two

2011-07-07T23:21:00.000-06:00

3 Frames: One

2011-06-19T00:54:00.000-06:00

Dobie Gray at Wayne Manor? Give Me a Beat, Boy, and Free My Soul!

2011-06-05T22:11:00.000-06:00

WAYNEMANOR

Latest Update: July 5, 2010

All of this nifty stuff has been created by Corry Arnold and Ross Hannan with the help of Garth Lewis.

The Wayne Manor nightclub in Sunnyvale, at Washington and Murphy, was a unique slice of Bay Area music history. Sunnyvale is the town just South of Mountain View, which in turn is just South of Palo Alto. Washington and Murphy is roughly between El Camino Real and Central Expressway (Alma), next to Los Altos Town Center and the train station (now the Cal Train station). Although Sunnyvale is in the heart of Silicon Valley, in 1965 there were more orchards in Santa Clara County than chip factories, and Sunnyvale was just another pleasant but growing community.
Club owner Joe Lewis had bought an old bank building on South Murphy. As told by his son Garth, Joe initially opened the club in late 1965 as a South Bay branch of West Hollywood's famed Whisky A Go Go, although little trace of the Sunnyvale branch has survived beyond this wonderful photograph of the Joel Scott Hill Trio and Joni Lyman with a young Bob Mosley on bass. Looking to re-launch the club in January 1966 with a new theme, Joe took his 11-year old son's advice and created a club based around DC's Batman comic book. Conveniently, soon after the club opened ABC-TV debuted its Batman TV series. Although the show only ran for two years (from January 12, 1966 to March 14, 1968), it had episodes twice a week and was an immediate camp sensation. Wayne Manor served alcohol and was an adult discotheque, but the suburbs were growing and there weren't very many rock clubs catering to the South Bay (Palo Alto's Big Beat was probably the only direct competitor).
The club was decorated like the Bat Cave, and dancers were dressed like Bat Girl or Catwoman. Various acts headlined, but the club was structured like a Las Vegas nightclub, with a band headlining from Tuesday thru Sunday, sometimes staying for weeks at a time. Of the acts we have identified as playing Wayne Manor so far, we can see a clear multi-cultural policy was applied to the booking of acts (Dobie Gray, The Coasters, Rivera Brothers, Sly and the Family Stone).

Bubbly Creek in Summer

2011-06-02T01:23:00.000-06:00

Yes, the South Branch of the Chicago River looks lovely this time of year.

Rush Hour On The El

2011-05-30T23:37:00.000-06:00

Rainy Night In Burbank

2011-05-27T00:45:00.000-06:00

Actually, these are shots from 87th & State, then down at Fullerton Avenue facing west, then the Dan Ryan Expressway (I-94), and finally the blur of tail lights as a car passes in front of me as I waited to cross the street to my block. I love that last shot, the car was like a negative blue.

Not One Of These Books Helped Me At All

2011-05-26T01:10:00.001-06:00

Elevated to Subway at Armitage

2011-05-10T01:05:00.000-06:00

wayneallensallee&friends

2011-05-09T00:22:00.000-06:00

I've not been posting here of late, but I've tried to update my website, set up by Yvonne Navarro. Please check out and perhaps bookmark www.wayneallensallee.blogspot.com Thanks! I will still post here when I'm done with a few writing projects.

My First Published Writing, 1975.

2011-04-30T23:56:00.000-06:00

Moony is Moondragon, should you care to know.

Guess It Doesn't Matter If These Are Even In The Right Order, Right?

2011-04-29T23:59:00.000-06:00

Its really better when you make your own story.

City After Dark: State & Jackson, 10 PM, 04 Apr 11

2011-04-22T00:28:00.000-06:00

I walked from Monroe to Wabash to Jackson then back down State to Monroe. One city block.

My Dad's Getting Rid of His Past

2011-04-20T23:08:00.000-06:00

Nothing I can do to stop him, he's always been an orderly man. He knows he's 80 now and he is acting accordingly, the way you'd expect of him. He let me keep a few bullets.

Dave Duerson is Gone

2011-04-09T00:37:00.000-06:00

Yes, I've Been Totally Neglectful

2011-04-08T00:54:00.000-06:00

I've just been getting a lot of writing done. Like, fiction and non-fiction writing. I'm Bukowskizing myself. So here's some shots of the tunnel where Amtrak trains go beneath the city, crowded subway cars, and a giant Indian.

Perigee Moon at The Lakefront

2011-04-01T23:36:00.000-06:00

A few weeks back, when the perigee moon was the brightest in decades, I went down to the Adler Planetarium to try and get a few photos. There were clouds, but I had a nice time wandering aimlessly and taking photos. There was even a helicopter flying in circles. I cut out at dusk and by the time I arrived home the moon was visible through a mist. The next day I said the heck with it and took a photo from behind the Walgreens near my house.

Pay Attention To The Clock On The Wall...

2011-03-29T23:47:00.000-06:00

Once again, I am cursed by those four sticks.

Faded Dreams On Division Street

2011-03-27T23:26:00.001-06:00

FADED DREAMS OF DIVISION STREET
By Wayne Allen Sallee
    “A writer does well if in his whole lifetime he can tell the story of one street.” Nelson Algren lived those words hard and unflinchingly, delineating Division Street with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. The avenue was Polish Broadway in postwar Chicago. Algren revealed to us the rules of the con games, had us examine the failure in the faces passing beneath billboards unattainably high–higher than the El tracks in the days before those viaducts were barricades protecting the gentry from the housing projects, days when a shot and a beer only set you back fifteen cents.
    Division Street has changed over the last sixty years, surviving a Jeykll/Hyde transformation (like the old Sinatra hangout that became a Mexican Laundromat) to reemerge as a gentrified hangout for a new breed of clubbers. The Monarch beer signs are long faded, and no one urges you to open a bottle and draw off a glass of Drewery’s. These nights it’s a Leinie–Leinenkugel–on tap, or Rolling Rock, and the bartenders bring their own CDs to play during their shifts. Screw the juke, give the boys and girls a photo booth to drop their jingle in.
    The Leinies are two-fifty for an eight-ouncer, and you won’t find factory workers down this sad street anymore. What you will find are wannabe hipsters and perpetual grad students, skinheads, all-nighters and more than a few greying Svengalis nursing house bourbon with toothless mouths.
    The old men are the only ones who wince when the flash in the photo booth goes off. They know, better than any of us, that frozen moments are the worst of memories.
    In Algren’s The Man With The Golden Arm, first published in 1949, Frankie Machine dealt illegal card games in the hushed back room of Schwiefka’s, with his pal and partner, Solly Saltskin steering the marks through the door: monotone poker faces in a seven-to-three world, the elevated train reminding them when it was time to move on. Sinatra played the starched-collared, morphine-addicted Francis Macjinek in Otto Preminger’s film, and his words”It’s all in the wrist with a deck or a cue” were a litany for the next minute being better than the last. Or, at least, no worse.
    The elevated train itself has moved on. Where Algren’s iron thunder once moved level with the second floor flats down Paulina, there is now only the occasional gunshot from one of the seven gangs that populate the neighborhood streets. The O’Hare-Douglas line–The Blue Line–is now a subway. The face of the North Side changed twenty-five years ago with the creation of Interstate 94, the Kennedy Expressway.
    Where Schweifka’s used to be, on the corner of Damen and Division, is a bar these days called The Rainbo Club. The steerer is gone, replaced by a bouncer, a black man with veins in his biceps as big as a nun’s reproaching finger, and the neon in the window clots his face. At seven in the evening you can still hear your own breath in the place. Eleven o’clock and it’s a hive of opinions.
    Most of the crowd consists of students from the Art Institute downtown. The cheap housing and cheaper regentrification–you won’t see health bars or luxury condos crafted in incomprehensible shapes and colors–have kept the neighborhood from going to hell as more of the old-country people die off. And they do die off, because nobody along Division Street ever retires to a different city.
    A television series about people trapped on an island has ended, a show about advertising set in the 1960s is running a marathon so new viewers can play catch-up: a corner table of students discuss the good and the bad of both, a method of bonding that in Algren’s day involved the cheapest portable radio on wrestling nights perched behind the guy pouring the cheapest swill off the stick.
    Sarah is working on her Master’s in journalism at Northwestern and thinks the former show referred to the American Dream. Joe found the former to be an audience participation thing, noting that similar shows in the nineties didn’t rely on computer and marketing tie-ins. Yong Koo, an Art Institute expatriate who both smiles and sneers in a zippered leather jacket befitting the best of the Elvis impersonators, would rather talk about Japanese monster movies.
    R. E. M. starts in “Electrolite,” Michael Stipe singing about a girl whose eyes are burning holes into some guy, he’s gasoline, he’s burning green, dig? There’s a painting of a group of people with bowling-ball shaped faces that shines when the flash in the photo booth goes off. The bouncer bouncing as he sees fit.
    File in, fill up and fall out.
    Where the poker table at Schweifka’s would have been, a Road Kings pinball machine now sits, with one of those Hamm’s waterfall signs off-center to the right. The music mix runs from the smooth piano of Duke Ellington, new waves bands that were famous when most of the clientele were in diapers, then back the Stan Getz on the sax, followed by John Coltrane, the essential sixties hard bop blower himself. Then back to Echo and The Bunnymen. Flashbacks and deja vu by the bottle.
    And you have to shout to be heard, so you know who smokes because they have nicotine breath. Or the kids just old enough to tentatively try Schnapps. No apple martinis in this joint.
    In the men’s room, once you look past the lolling skinheads, faintly visible in pencil on a pocked grey wall, you read “All in the wrist with a deck or a cue.” Someone hadn’t forgotten. The Svengali, perhaps? Below it, a cartoon caveman tells the casual reader that his two-dimensional dick is as hard as bedrock.
*****
    Division Street by day. Attain street level on the northwest corner of Milwaukee and Ashland and get assaulted by the smells of Mexican fajitas and chicken fried a la Kentucky. The neon stretches in the direction of the setting sun. Milwaukee used to be nicknamed Lunchpail avenue because of the large numbers of factory workers who walked to their places of employment, lunch boxes in their lunch hooks.
    These days, these years, there are plenty of listless bodies with ten-yard stares. Nobody back from Iraq or Afghanistan with the war jitters, just men who’ve had pet monkeys on their backs since Reaganomics. Your best bet is to just start walking west.
    Any Wood Street beat copper will tell you the only people who pay attention to their surroundings are cops and crazies. Writers might be added to that short list. Nelson Algren, in Chicago: City on the Make:
    “...it’s still a godforsaken spastic, a cerebral palsy natural among cities, clutching at the unbalanced air. Top-heavy, bleeding and blind. Under a toadstool-colored sky.
    “Maybe we all went to work too young.”
    But on a Friday night it’s time to put the week behind. Walk down the concrete under a sky of blue-green (maybe it was a bad day when Nelson wrote his prose poem), and see the horizon severed by three flats zigzagging down on either side. On an abandoned building just this side of Hermitage, flyers for new clubs further north are plastered over graffiti that most likely reads Long Live The FALN!, a throwback to the Puerto Rican terrorist movement of the 70s.
    And, for some inexplicable reason, the Cobras and the Latin Kings spray their gang symbols on garage doors along side streets.
    Bottles from a nearby liquor store litter the dead grass alongside each stoop where you can still hear the echoes of pitched pennies. Brown and white labels for the winos’ breakfasts, Night Train Express and Richard’s Wild Irish Rose. Nothing but the best, you can go find your damn malt liquor somewhere else, dad.
    At the corner on Mary Court, there’s an apteka–a Polish drugstore–a vertical sign painted in the 1950s, there is no doubt, with a nurse taking a man’s blood pressure. The man was had his hat and jacket slung over a vacant chair. A busy piece of art, no doubt. And we all know JFK killed the hat by not wearing one at his inauguration. Does anyone know why nurses stopped wearing those vaguely Puritanical white wedges on their lovely coiffed heads?
    Then there’s a Baptist church, its architecture made it look as if it was built by hand with whatever materials were handy. An empty lot. A taco joint with an overwhelming smell of jalapeños that is overwhelmed by the chlorine seeping from the Turkish-Russian bath house. Finally, the big time. A holdover from the last generation, and the one before that. No televisions, no air conditioning, and no more wars. For just a little while.
    Enough time for the baby boomer generation, and eye blinks that flip images like dated photos from a Polaroid Land camera, its 2011, and those post-war kids are half-century men who scratch their balding heads and wonder why this young hipster crowd feels the need to change everything.
    It’s the Polish Triangle, is what it is. This from a rumdum propped on a stoop littered with pennies and matchbooks from Sophie’s Busy Bee. Bright yellow, dull copper. No sun to make the colors wink. Milwaukee to Damen, then down Division, right back to Milwaukee. Remember RB’s, that big clothing store? Two stories, it was.
    It’s a gee-dee sports bar now is what it is, and you realize there was no bum, not even a stoop. Just a penny staring at you. Pick it up and toss it into the street, maybe it will fall in the gutter. Just cross the damn street already. Cross over to Hermitage.
    Phyllis’s Musical Inn, 1800 West Division, established 1954.
    The current owner, Clemont Jaskot, was born on the second floor two years after the grand opening. Sit down on a red-topped stool and tap the cigarette-scarred bar vas though you have caffeine nerves. A Wood Street squad rolls by outside. Clem draws an Old Style from the stick and tells his tale.
    He says how for most of the people in this neighborhood it’s a second home. Dressed in jeans with suspenders and a faded Cubs t-shirt, Jaskot, moving in on middle age, gesticulates alternately with hands and eyebrows as he mops up an errant spill from one of the kegs at the edge of the bar. As he turns, you can see Sandburg’s name on the jersey. Ryan Sandburg, another Chicago ghost.
    Algren would grin that lop-sided grin. He wasn’t Bukowski, he wasn’t Burroughs. Hell, he wasn’t even Philip K. Dick. He wrote a handful of novels, a couple dozen short stories, all self-contained within a mile radius. Henry Chinanski made the rounds, he’s still alive unlike Bukowski. Algren died in 1981 and left his ghosts in every doorway. Molly-O might just be freshening up in the ladies’ room at Phyllis’s. There’s a mermaid on the door.
    Jaskot wipes his hands off, the guy grins like he could talk anybody into anything at all. He tells of the type of clientele, construction workers, painters. The nine-to-fivers from downtown. (Not the Loop, that phrase is unknown here, because nobody on Division Street goes further than Ashland Avenue.) The hipsters show up on the weekends, for the bands. Their kind slowly bleeds into the side streets.
    Few have the confidence of fictional Frankie Machine.
    Jaskot said they worked hard to keep the place, he’s talking about mom and dad, keep the place going after the riots. He was a kid back in 1968, but the near north side was a war zone all the way to Humboldt Park and those FALN bastards. Soon after, Martin Luther King’s death made the city burn. Everything cooled down, the world revolving like an empty barstool after last call.
    Jaskot goes back to work, the crowd builds and fades. Outside, a new glass high-rise royally screws with the horizon, and just next door, a man looks down at his waist and he could easily have been checking for a gunshot would as to see if his fly was open.
    Division Street: Irregulars welcome.
    The man checking his fly intended to become drunker than a hoot owl. Standing beneath an Old Style sign that read Zimne Piwo, he had hard muscular arms with liver spots on his hands that seemed out of place.
    Francis Majcinek, our ghost guide, used to lament in the pages of Algren’s The Man With The Golden Arm that every other doorway led into a tavern and you had as much on the other guy as he had on you. You find a place, you make it your territory. Liver Spots reminisced on the Orange Lantern, a place from back in the day when taverns put something behind their names. No gee-dee sports or theme bars. Dice girls, cigarette girls, cats that sleep atop a framed picture of Pope John Paul II , and a light behind the bar that went from green to yellow to red. Open to last call to get the hell out, all of you bums.
    He goes back in the way he came, into the Gold Star, an SRO motel above it, the weight crushing down on the painted logo. There’s a lipless wonder that everyone calls Cocobolo, making advances down the bar as if each stool inhabited by a female is a slot machine. Accordion music pumps out of an old jukebox and Cocobolo I shooed out like a fly ball 1moving past the Toyota sign out onto Sheffield.
    Time slows and backs up, the last stop being The Bop Shop, at 1807 West Division. Home to live jazz bands, in present day it is a failed sushi bar, the insides gutted to flecks of grey. What did they expect?
    Ten years back, huge booths with pea-green upholstery, a painting of Charlie “Bird” Parker wailing away, not far from Charlie Minus, John Coltrane, Bessie Smith, and Lester Young. All observing the stage from their individual places above those pea-green booths. The guy running the bar smoked Wantons, talk was small, 9/11 hadn’t happened yet. In a few minutes Ron Dewar on tenor sax will play with The Holly Cole Trio. Until then, a generic cop show flashes silently on a television angled below a Hamm’s sign. The beer refreshing.
    There’s a cat named Boogie, he used to come in during the summer, same as it is now, whenever the music was playing. The cat’s owner moved, the jazz cat of Division Street stayed. Word was he somehow helped a cop named Rizzi arrest a felon in the Norbe Laundromat, but that is open to conjecture.
    Before the Bop Shop, the joint had been the Lucky Stop, and it was Stanley Wozieniek that had installed those pea-green booths that were turned to rubble by fools a half century later. After he died, the place was run by his widow Mania, until her death in 198. Remember: no one retires to the suburbs from Division Street.)
    The Szostaks and the Mamachs who lived out their downtime away from the factories are slowly being replaced by any number of ethnic names. Mexican, Hindi, Jamaican, throw a pin on a wall map. You find them all, some of them students, others professionals, at Leo’s Luncheonette, next to...
    The Bop Shop is gone. Phyllis’s has evening hours now, the construction workers are building townhouses in Wicker Park now. It’s early summer 2011. A redhead named Kara serves eggs sunny-side up, hash browns and steaming coffee. Nix on the decaf. The counter is a backwards L, taking quick glances at Kara’s green eyes is like looking at the moon before it fades behind the nighttime clouds. Leo’s is another holdout in a city that is perpetually changing.
    Algren’s Frankie Machine was a card dealer strung out on morphine who ended up swinging, in the worst sense, in a flophouse on Maypole Street back in 1948. Forget the spoon-fed crap Preminger put into the film with Sinatra and Novak. Forget celluloid, look for the word.
    Read about the real Machine, strung out on hope and trouble, on bad dreams and trouble. That was Division Street, then. The neighborhood changes, ever so slowly. Most trendy clubs look the same from the outside but for the Bud Lite neon signs shoved into the windows.
    The horizon of buildings is the same, the broken grin of a prizefighter. Sonny Liston. Gorgeous George. More ghosts. Why the hell would you want to leave anyway, baby? Where else can you haunt in peace.
    Sure, that tenor sax from a decade ago, moving up and down can still be hypnotic, but it doesn’t produce troubled dreams anymore. Division Street is on its way back up. Most of us never knew it was gone.
                                Wayne Allen Sallee
                                Burbank, Illinois
                                27 Mar 11

Coffee, Bones, Duck, Doll with Hangers and More

2011-03-25T22:28:00.000-06:00

Pigeons Quoting & Graffiti

2011-03-24T00:44:00.000-06:00

The pigeons are in that park where the big eye used to be and the graffiti was on one block around the Red Lion and on the ceiling of the Red Line train, of all places.

3 Photos Without Moving, Ten Seconds Apart

2011-03-20T01:11:00.000-06:00

While Everyone Else Was At The St. Patrick's Day Parade

2011-03-15T23:40:00.000-06:00

Cookie's Fiance & The Hotel Men Only

2011-03-09T23:05:00.000-07:00

Hosing Down the El platform

2011-03-08T23:08:00.000-07:00

I absolutely love the fact that the woman never once moved, standing ramrod straight, not waiting with a group of other people off to the right (west) of the hosing. She wanted her solitude when the time came to eventually board.

Grant Morrison's The Bride

2011-03-02T23:55:00.000-07:00

Created for the Seven Soldiers maxi-series in 2006, I sure wish we'd see her again.

Dream Dolls

2011-03-01T22:59:00.000-07:00

Better than Craigslist, I suppose. I should have mentioned in yesterday's post that there were 45-60 MPH winds on Lake Shore Drive and that's why you saw doors opened, they couldn't be shut. Many people were rescued by crawling through their windows. I don't know if I'll be posting much in the immediate future, I've been battling having my right eye swollen shut for weeks, I'm now getting severe headaches and am going to an eye doctor in the morning, he'll likely ask for an MRI, and so, without insurance I'll head up to Swedish Covenant on the north side and sit in the ER as a hobo.

Lake Shore Drive, Snow Locked

2011-03-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

First, these are not photos I took. But February has ended, tomorrow's 41 degrees will melt trhe last of the snow--we topped out at 30 inches for the month--but these shots of LSD are something. Initially, the city got heat for not shutting down the drive, but the blizzard did hit about three hours earlier than expected. Things were still OK until a CTA bus jack-knifed, blocking traffic. Days later, a few people who were rescued from their cars by firefighters on snowmobiles admitted they ere wrong to even get on the Drive. As it was, 15 foot wave surges had been expected and all along I thought that most of those people were just avoiding the subway or surface bus routes. LSD will end up on Hollywood and Sheridan, so its not like anyone had no other option but to get on it. You can avoid crowded trains but taking one south and then doubling back, thus already having a seat. You might lose twenty minutes, God forbid you are with black people going south, but your car wouldn't have been frozen to the street for 72 hours. Also, every time it snows big or the anniversary rolls around, we see shots of the blizzard of 1967. And what photos do they show? Cars stranded on LSD.

Stop Smoking Crack and Eat Bologna Sandwiches

2011-02-28T00:17:00.000-07:00

My February 28th essay for Storytellers Unplugged.

Stop Smoking Crack and Eat Bologna Sandwiches

Sorry. Busy looking at my screen saver of Michelle Rodriguez. After three minutes of me in deep thought, the screen will revert back to a shot of her sitting in some sort of egg-type chair. And it almost happened again. I switched over to a photo of the Loop in the early 50s, when the Borders had been the Greyhound station instead. Enough of that. I’m stalling. See, last month Dave posted my piece on the 31st, I was going to tell him my tank was empty, then realized there is no February 31st, and let go with a son of a bitch that was drowned out by the thunder and hail and Natalie Portman’s acceptance speech at the Oscars.

This month was hellish, though I realize that other parts of the country certainly had worse. We had a mild winter through January. I donated $25 to Children’ Leukemia Society and our sexy meteorologist on NBC 5, Ginger Zee, rewarded me with a promo photo as well as a sexy black and white split shot front and back, tank top and jeans, and my name and the words sunny skies and other words I forget because they are written on her @$$. All legit, and its for the kids, right? And then we were hit by the blizzards the East coast had been getting for weeks. 22 inches in Alsip, just south of Burbank, put us in the record books. Right now its at 30 inches, the most snowfall on record for this month since, like, forever. OK, our records only go back to the Great Chicago Fire, 1871, but saying forever makes it sound much more ominous. We’ve had a few days near 40, but it was a month for watching my breath frost and have that same old thought about hearing Springsteen lyrics skittering under the wheels of cars along with the thin lines of snow. Coming back towards the Fullerton el station with Mike and Darci last Monday, Darci asked why I didn’t have my gloves on, and I said I had my fists clenched. Anticipating that she’d ask about the gloves again, I said that its better if I just jam my fingernails into my palms.

February was also an odd month for my writing career. Maybe this is my decade. After all, the world ends in, what, 22 months? Now the last few months, I’ve been blessed that Crossroad Press put a few of my works out there. Then I had my werewolf western story “High Moon” chosen for a book that is similar to Year’s Best Horror, only done by the decade. And I can finally announce that Gauntlet Press is releasing JN Williamson’s The Illustrated Masques, which collects a two comic series by Innovation in the early 90s. The artist for my story, “Rail Rider,” is Mike Tokamato, and the work is amazing. One version of the book will sell for $1500.00 because King & Barker signed it, but for those who want the tipsheet with us D-listers–I’m next to Flava Flav–the price is affordable. I loved Jerry Williamson. Not like my man-crush for Kurt Russell, or my affection for the unshaven jawline of Gordon Van Gelder. Jerry had gone from being a dentist to writing dozens of books. In the original edition of Masques, he changed my story title to “Third Rail” because the implication, to him, was that the man in my story had an erection. Nope. In fact, he gets frightened when a Polish bowling team passes by on the el platform. And, bless his soul, he gave The Best Blurb Ever for James Kisner’s STRANDS, back in the late 80s. I quote: “This is a novel that was written to be read.” This is true, I swear, my hand on Rahm Emmanuel’s nutsack. But when it’s the first hardcover sale, my name on the back cover, Jerry could have renamed it whatever the hell he wanted. To add to my forward moving news, there’s progress with my novel Proactive Contrition, but I’ll not jinx it. Oh, okay, I will. The guys who do that Nigerian lottery will publish it, but I need to send them only $437.22 for printing costs. (In all truth, the novel is not just gathering dust, and you all everybody will be the first to know.) And just yesterday, I heard from a guy I sent story to in 2008, a French fellow who now tells me the story will be in a French horror/fantasy magazine with the dubious name of Promenade. Again, with the train wreck that is my career, does it matter what the mag is called?

My good friend Bob Maddock sent me six CDs of The Holly Cole Trio, which is great, but it kinda sucks when I start singing “Girl Talk” while I’m in the shower at LA Fitness. Hey! The title of this piece, right? Earlier in the week, I headed downtown around 2 in the afternoon, took the 87th Street bus to the Red Line. Well, this black guy with one prominent tooth spent the next ten stops preaching about the evils of smoking crack and how the Lord demands us to eat bologna sandwiches to humble ourselves. This, as he waved around a Bible and a bag of Doritos. I have photos to prove it. Spring’s coming, but the meltdowns are here all year round. Take it from one who knows. Happy March, gang!

Last Week Thursday

2011-02-25T23:56:00.000-07:00

Reservoir Bananas

2011-02-22T23:49:00.000-07:00

A photo from New Year's Eve, 1996 unearthed by Sean Doolittle. Brian Hodge and myself acting rather strangely.

51st & Pulaski Sideways Fs

2011-02-21T23:55:00.000-07:00

I'm just playing around with the photo, but these bars have been in place since I first saw them in June of 2007. I get why there's no construction, I've just never seen an odder looking empty lot.

Failed Attempts, Please Move Along

2011-02-21T15:52:00.000-07:00

Cap, Bird, Dog, Cash

2011-02-20T00:25:00.000-07:00

Taken from the Madison & Wabash el. The cap and the bird, at street level is a guy who plays his guitar for coins, he always has the white Lab with him. The other guys just come and sit, sometimes jam f they bring tubs for drums.

These Are The Nights When I Hear Springteen In The Air

2011-02-19T00:38:00.000-07:00

So I Scanned Some Photos From 2007

2011-02-17T22:21:00.000-07:00

The cow was stolen the weekend after it was installed. There is a song by Elvis (after the film title), "Flaming Star," about death, because all of Elvis's songs were about death. I replaced the word cow, so the lyrics I sing are, When a man, sees that flaming cow, he knows his time, his time has come."

CTA Bus Passes From the 1980s

2011-02-15T23:56:00.000-07:00

Valentines Day With The Super-Heroes

2011-02-15T00:39:00.000-07:00

Over the course of the day, I posted these on Facebook, telling everyone how Valentines Day was for 1/Robin, 2/Spider-Man, 3/Aunt May, 4/Shatner, 5/Supergirl, 6/My agent and my proofreader, respectively, and 7/something terribly horribly terrible.

Fourth Wall and Animal Man

2011-02-12T00:24:00.000-07:00

My essay for Salem Press was on Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man and this was one of Morrison's first implementations of breaking through the fourth wall with his characters. I also added a photo of a bunch of Elvis impersonators pissing against a third wall.

Here's A Creepy House From The Next Block

2011-02-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

Random Photos From January

2011-02-09T23:40:00.000-07:00

22.4": Once The Blizard Was Over

2011-02-08T00:08:00.000-07:00

Black Hawk Down

2011-02-06T23:09:00.000-07:00

Day in, day out. Helicopters. Yes, there is a National Guard unit at Midway. No, I don't know why there are so many flights. Google Earth has a new feature, a sliding timeline. So I screwed around and, there it is in 2007, a helicopter on the ground just a few dozen yards from 55th & Leclaire. A lot of people have asked me if I was sure they were unmarked helicopters, not green or even news choppers. Well, they're black, baby.

One Day Later, Mickey Dolenz Gets Swallowed By A Snake-Python

2011-02-05T23:56:00.000-07:00

OK, here's the dilly-o. I posted that YouTube yesterday because I try to sing the lyrics every time I'm kayaking. I'm floating down the river with a saturated liver...Well, symmetry come to visit again. I'm flipping channels between Game Show Network and History Revealed when I suddenly see Dolenz on screen. SyFy, no less. He's singing at a cotillion or something. I couldn't find the film, or Dolenz's acting credit, on IMDb. It goes like this, he steps up on stage, and then is promptly swallowed whole by the big snake thing. OK, its a python. I swear I saw none of the film until Micky D's name was actually being announced on the screen. And I'm curious as to if he would have sang "Goin Down," which is his signature song.

The Monkees - Goin' Down

2011-02-04T23:48:00.000-07:00

Two Dozen Scars

2011-02-03T00:05:00.000-07:00

Four Sticks Can Be Expected in 2011, Even Five

2011-02-02T00:17:00.001-07:00

I took photos of our blizzard earlier, and will have more in the morning. Its 1:15 AM and we are at about 16 inches, but the wind gusts are incredible, close to 50 MPH. I'll describe more in the next post, when I have photos to go with it. For now, a bus transfer, the kind that slides into a slot that then spits it back out, and a gallon of milk I purchased on the 2nd of January. I had no intention at all of scouting anywhere for the exact date shown. Oh, and the Tropicana mango juice is fantastic. Buy some.

Weather Report

2011-01-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

Remember 1990?

2011-01-30T01:04:00.000-07:00

Seriously?

2011-01-29T23:04:00.000-07:00

I'd rather have a photo of Daley hanging up like everybody else in Chicago does.

The Last Moving Picture Show

2011-01-28T00:13:00.000-07:00

The Last Moving Picture Show
28 Jan 11

Last week, I appeared in a short film, “The Shadow,” at the Columbia Film College. I took the job for reasons all writers should, both to write about the experience, or at least take notes, including every contour of the girl applying my make-up, as I could only stare straight ahead, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The other reason is the obvious one, to whore myself completely to those producing and directing the film. I know several writers who teach at Columbia, which has multiple campuses in areas both good and dismal. But I thought it was time to make a few contacts who worked in film, and I had the good fortune to talk up my writing to a few guys in the green room, “The Jail Guard,” and “The Tenement Boy.” The waif who put my make-up on was happy to know that two of my books have that evil “e with a hyphen” in front of it, I’d say it made me feel older, but let me just describe how it all came about.

A month ago, I was skimming craigslist for gigs, and I’ve been lucky to find a few focus study groups in the [ETC] section (a few years back, I was paid to give my opinion on Gatorade yogurt, which by the grace of Elvis is not on the shelves at 7-11s everywhere). And there it was: actors, 20 minute film, etc. Send head shot. Well, my resume photo is a shot of me standing in front of Jonny O’s Hot Dogs at 38th & Morgan, near the old Stockyards. Well, it worked. Got the call, a confirmation date, then the sheet with everybody’s name and what they do and who they are in the film. I was “Dapper Old Bald Man Holding Sign.” And with that, I understood how I got the job. Wardrobe gave me period clothes from a hundred years ago, my wool pants had a fly that kept sliding down, the story of my life, really. Then I went to makeup, and had sideburns and a handlebar moustache glued onto my face. Afterwards, the girl about a third of my age put all that powder and non-shiny stuff on my head. Now I know why so many women are so happy: they are stoned on their own makeup. It was like having Kit Kat-flavored smelling salts shoved up my nose. And that stuff had to keep getting applied whenever I was under the lights. All I could eat was croutons because everything else stuck to the moustache glue, so after seven hours of filming and getting my head dusted, I likely had a blood alcohol level that would have my pull my own fly open as soon as I left the building. (Well, I really wasn’t going to do that, we had a minus ten wind chill that day.) And I don’t know how it happened, but I gouged open my fingernail while holding this sign above my head in front of a green screen, and asked if it was going to be a silent film, as I wanted to start crying uncontrollably.

I cut out after that damnable moustache was gone, and shoved as much of the remnants from lunch in my mouth as I could. Salad greens, tinfoil, that seemed to be it. Those jackal film students. It was a stretch back from 16th Street to the Roosevelt el stop, and within blocks State Street goes from industrial to hipster-y lofts where the people walking towards each building have voices that sound as if helium was pumped through their nasal passages. An aside: there is a product sold her for these idiots who live in high-rises and have pets. A chunk of Astroturf and a plastic fire hydrant for the balcony. Yes, I’m serious. After that the neighborhood briefly gets creepy, enough that when I turned onto Roosevelt, I was completely startled by a giant full moon not far above Lake Michigan. I might have shrieked like Nathan Lane, I just don’t know. And I was home ninety minutes later. I had taken some photos in the prop and wardrobe rooms, made some notes of the day as well as working on “A Once-Told Tale,” which will play out as if Shirley Jackson had sneaked into a tea party rally. All good discipline. And I learned that I could get high if I wore women’s makeup. Maybe its weed, maybe its Maybelline.

My January 28th essay for Storytellers Unplugged.

Your Life May Be in Danger if You've Seen William Shatner On a UFO

2011-01-28T00:07:00.000-07:00

Just sayin, is all.

Bicycles & Shopping Cart

2011-01-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

These photos are near the Red Line subway entrance, the bikes are there because students at the Art Institute have lofts in the building off to the right. Borders is past that. I really like the ingenuity of the homeless person who thought to chain his cart up. Good on him or her.

Midway Liquors

2011-01-22T23:10:00.000-07:00

A few blocks past LA Fitness, there's a small lot with Midway Liquors and a boarded up building next to it. As I was riding down 92nd Street last month, I saw the rubble and you know me. As I took the photos, I saw that gap between the buildings. The first photo has my bike dipping through the gap, no boards or horses blocking the way. Next to a liquor store. Knowing the Oak Lawn police, some missing person would lay at the bottom of that pile for days, no one thinking to look. I honestly can't believe that gap is there.

18 Jan 11

2011-01-19T23:25:00.000-07:00

17 Jan 11

2011-01-18T23:08:00.000-07:00

This is The Orange Pentagon

2011-01-16T23:27:00.000-07:00

Ghost Hood on The Red Line

2011-01-15T00:17:00.000-07:00

Photos from a few Mondays back. Nothing cool, just bus and subway shots. I do like the way the hooded guy is ghosted through the opposite window of the Red Line. And even though I'm standing in a well-lit room as I wait for the bus on the ride home, I still have to contend with an open stairwell that leads to the el tracks and the Dan Ryan Expressway, gusts of frigid air are continually thrust upwards and after awhile, I grudgingly accept that I will have to put up with this for forty minutes.

Our Weathergirl Ginger Zee

2011-01-13T00:19:00.001-07:00

The b&w photo will be signed and mailed for a donation to Childrens Leukemia Society. There are times where I'm not even looking at the temperatures.

By the way, where IS Emily?

2011-01-11T00:24:00.000-07:00

Blacx Ice & Books Signed by Dead Authors

2011-01-10T00:30:00.000-07:00

This is what is called black ice, and often it will pile up along street corners and turning lanes. I took these two shots after getting off the bus from up on Fullerton. Now, the photo above. I found a beat up old table at the Salvation Army, and now I have a place to display books I have that are autographed by writers now dead. Its a tough call on which one is dearest to me. Robert Bloch signed Psycho when we were on a panel together. He saw the Corgi imprint and joked that he had never known that edition of the book at all. Mr. Bloch was quite the deadpan. A few years later, he signed The Star Stalker and The Scarf, two books that are more like Hollywood mysteries, a phase he had gone through in the late 1940s. Then there is Evan Hunter. I have a signed copy of The Blackboard Jungle and Runaway Black, a very obscure novel from the early 1950s, written under the pseudonym Richard Marsten. (I have both editions, Marsten and Hunter.) With all the hoobajoo about Huck Finn lately, there is no way that this book could be published today without controversy. The title Runaway Black pretty much sums it up. I also have a copy of Author's Choice, Karl Edward Wagner actually bled onto the page, after cutting himself on what he thought was a screw cap on a bottle. I suppose I could clone him. There are a few other books on display by living authors, the most prominent being Richard Matheson's I Am Legend and The Shrinking Man.

And Now They Come In Threes

2011-01-08T23:58:00.000-07:00

That's my driveway and that's the window outside where I am now typing this.

Google Earth & White Castles

2011-01-07T00:21:00.000-07:00

Blogger was slow last night, so I'm finishing up now. Its pretty crazy how you can zoom in on the 3D buildings. The Oak Lawn Hilton is the tallest building from 95th Street on for the next 180 miles. The White Castle is just a few blocks away. There are two shots on 63rd Street, one showing the bus and the little cameras, it is when you touch one of the cameras that you then zoom into a giant bubble and you can turn any angle you want. You can see the lime green building in both photos. The last shot is of the three-flat I grew up in, and in this case, cameras were few and far between, so this was the best shot I could get. I have no goddamn clue what to post next. Maybe my obituary.

Google Earth and Times Past

2011-01-04T23:48:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try a few more of these over the next few days. The photo at the top--Gangster City--I took that back in 1988.

How I Lost My Winter Hat

2011-01-04T00:45:00.000-07:00

So for Christmas Eve, we went to a place called The pit in Hickory Hills and I took photos of this stuff on the outside. After we left, I realized I lost my cap. Mind you, I had found it on the el two winters ago and I was used to it. But my dad goes and mentions that he saw the cap fall from my pocket when I took the photos. So I wanted to say Seriously, Dad? Seriously? So tonight I bought a cap from CVS for four bucks.

The Yellow House in Bellair...

2011-01-03T00:10:00.000-07:00

is gone. Google Earth is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, the "street cameras" only covered County Road 2700, so I could not get a close-up of the General Store. There was a nice shot of the church at the intersection of the town's two main roads.

Sock Monkey/Purple Door/New Year's Day

2011-01-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

2011

2011-01-01T00:34:00.000-07:00

Christmas With Buddy

2010-12-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

Driving 63rd Street, to Woodlawn

2010-12-29T23:53:00.000-07:00

Here's The Chance to Do Your Thing!

2010-12-27T23:47:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you all everybody can come up with a proper story here, but I'm just cleaning out some random shots I never got around to posting this year.

Solstice/Eclipse

2010-12-27T00:15:00.000-07:00

Here are the photos I mentioned yesterday. The first four are by Jeff Burkes and the last, signed at the bottom, is a shot from Norway.

Horses at Eyja

2010-12-25T22:14:00.000-07:00

I had saved some solstice/eclipse photos to post today, but in looking at the thumbnails I thought I'd post this one of horses in Iceland, from earlier this year. In the background you can see theweather changes caused by the volcano's eruption.

Honorable Mentions

2010-12-24T23:41:00.000-07:00

Possible Crime Scene Photos

2010-12-23T23:55:00.000-07:00

The clues are all there.

December 21st 2010

2010-12-21T23:07:00.000-07:00

I was downtown to have lunch with Greg and get some presents at Borders, it was in the 30s and foggy. More photos tomorrow.

No Solstice Eclipse Here

2010-12-20T23:16:00.000-07:00

Forget about the snowstorm. Of course it was damn well clear as can be the last two nights. So screw it, I'm posting a few photos from my Follow Apollo folder.

How Can I Top Sorcha Fall?: Post 1, 001

2010-12-19T22:49:00.000-07:00

My 1,000 Post: Sorcha Fall Revisited

2010-12-17T23:14:00.000-07:00

This might be my favorite post, so I'm reprinting for my anniversary.

I'm as conspiracy-minded as the next guy (who I know happens to be monitoring my thoughts), so I've been following little tidbits all week. Lights in Indiana and the National Guard admitting they were performing night exercises. This morning's earthquake, which, I assumed, had occurred on the ACTUAL fault line, near New Madrid, Missouri. Not in Crawford County, which I wrote about in my missive about Bellair, and is in the opposite side of the state. Larry sent me the following link and I added information about the original poster. Scott AFB is in southern Illinois, and is like the Midwest version of NORAD. I'm as much for the fall of western civilization as the next guy, but I'm really only here to entertain with the following info, guys and gals. Now, let's take it on home to Jesus...Wayne

INDIANAPOLIS — Loud booms and strings of flare-like lights that brightened the sky two nights in a row over north-central Indiana may have been F-16 fighter jets on training missions, an Indiana Air National Guard official said Thursday. The booms shook houses in the Kokomo area about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, frightening residents and prompting Howard County police to search for a downed aircraft, said Larry Smith, the county’s emergency management director. No aircraft debris was found, and Smith said he was at a loss to explain what some people speculated may have been a meteor. But Tech Sgt. Darin Hubble with the 122nd Fighter Wing, an Indiana Air National Guard unit based at Fort Wayne International Airport about 70 miles away, said military officials are investigating if F-16 training might explain the Kokomo booms and lights and similar reports Tuesday over Logansport. He said training often includes pilots shooting flares and can produce sonic booms that shake the ground below.

Earthquake reported in Illinois

April 18, 2008
Recommend (71)

BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

WEST SALEM, Ill.---- A 5.2-magnitude earthquake centered in southern Illinois rocked people awake across the Midwest early Friday, surprising residents unaccustomed to such a powerful tremblor.

The quake -- one of the strongest ever recorded in Illinois -- occurred just before 4:37 a.m.----which brings us to a blogger calling herself Sorcha Faal----but first, some background...

The Order of Sorcha Faal was established in 588 (BCE) in Tara, County Meath, Ireland, and claim as their Founder the oldest daughter of King Zedekiah, Tamar Tephi.

The name, Sorcha Faal, comes from the ancient Gaeilge branch of the Goidelic languages of Ireland and has the meaning of: Sorcha: She Who Brings Light Faal: the Dark and Barren Place

The Order of Sorcha Faal comprises 18 Monasteries in Ireland, Russia, Egypt, Lebanon, and the United States.

And now, Sorcha Faal...(please hold all applause until the end of the PowerPoint presentation)...

April 18, 2008

Nuclear Fueled Explosion Reported In US Midwest

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers

Reports from 3rd Army Headquarters of the Russian Space Command, located in Solnechnogorsk (Moscow oblast), are reporting today that a ‘nuclear fueled’ explosion has occurred in the United States region of Illinois after the downing of an American B-52 Bomber by, presumed, other elements of the US Air Force operating in that region.

So powerful was the explosion reported from this downed American Nuclear Bomber that Western propaganda media sources are reporting the effects of a 5.2 to 5.4 magnitude earthquake in that region, but to which the most accurate description of a nuclear type blast was reported by the Bloomberg News Service and who stated in their article: "You could hear a roaring sound and the whole motel shook, waking up the guests,'' Vibha Ambelal, manager of the Super 8 Motel in Mount Carmel, Illinois, near the epicenter, said in a telephone interview."

These reports further state that this was the second attempt by a US B-52 Nuclear Bomber to penetrate the North American Command Air Defenses surrounding the dissident United States Scott Air Force Base, located in Illinois, from which these aircraft seeking to bomb Iranian atomic facilities are based at.

On Tuesday, April 15th, American citizens to the Indiana region immediately east of Illinois reported numerous ‘booms’ and ‘flashes’ in their night skies which some attributed to fireball meteorites crashing into the atmosphere, but which the United States Air Force reported was caused by F-16 jet fighters ‘sonic booms’ and their use of ‘military flares’.

These reports, however, state that this April 15th incident turned back the first abortive attempt by dissident American Forces to secret their plundered nuclear weapons out of that country for their intended use against Iran.

The ‘trigger’ to these latest desperate attempts to embroil the World in Total War arose from the US Defense Secretaries ordering of a full accounting of all American Nuclear Weapons on March 28th after the discovery of that an unspecified number of them were ‘missing’.

The first attempt to use these ‘missing’ nuclear weapons against Iran we had previously reported on in our April 5th report titled "US Nuclear B-1 Bomber On Iran ‘Attack Run’ Shot Down" and which occurred in the Middle Eastern Nation of Qatar.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman further report that the American War Leaders were warned this past week by the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and by Pope Benedict XVI, both of whom traveled to the United States this week, against the attempts by the US to escalate their conflicts into another World War, but which by these latest events these War Leaders appear not to have listened to.

As we have previously reported too, the United States believes it has no option other than Total World War as their economy continues imploding while at the same time fuel prices are rising to catastrophic levels and more food riots are being reported the World over, all of which when combined signal the collapse of the American Empire on a scale not seen in since the collapse of the former Soviet Union on June 12, 1990.

It remains, without doubt, that the people living within the United States will not be allowed to know the full evidence of these events, and their imminent destruction, except by the means of dissident sources of information such as ours. But, and most strangely, the New York Times, and a publication not known for the reporting of dissident news, appears to have changed its course with its April 6th article titled "Duck and Cover: It’s the New Survivalism", and which said:

"THE traditional face of survivalism is that of a shaggy loner in camouflage, holed up in a cabin in the wilderness and surrounded by cases of canned goods and ammunition.

It is not that of Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley. Yet in Mr. Biggs’s new book, “Wealth, War and Wisdom,” he says people should “assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure.”

“Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food,” Mr. Biggs writes. “It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down.”

Survivalism, it seems, is not just for survivalists anymore."

This advice by the New York Times that the time has begun for Americans to begin their preparations for survival echo those of the giant US Banking concern Wells Fargo, that Britain’s Guardian News Service has recently reported warned these people: "Scott Anderson, chief economist at Wells Fargo, is equally pessimistic, describing the bullish views of some market players as "bordering on delusional", but which as their life savings continue to disappear they continue not to heed.

For the final outcome of these events we, perhaps, will have little warning, but, and surely anyone with open eyes can see, the storm clouds gathering on the horizon.

Posted by Wayne Allen Sallee at 4/18/2008 05:54:00 PM