Whoa. We give up on the pronunciation and move on to more important matters: the Three Laws of Robotics and where well be at the end of the world. I wanted to straighten his legs… but one came off.
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Marveling at a young William Shatner in Incubus (halting speech and all), we discuss our cars of yore and whether chewing gum remains chewable. He was unafraid!
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We discuss the merits and pitfalls of spiral staircases versus their more conventional brethren (and watch Timecrimes.) Time flies here.
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This is a textbook case of why you shouldn’t eat food during a podcast. We get our zithers out at watch The Third Man. Next time well have a foolproof coffin.
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Lots of compromises here. My original plan featured 6 months of autumn and 1 month of spring – I can’t possibly imagine an argument where autumn is not a favorite time of year. Spring exists strictly as a transitionary device. And summer is a dire warning, a reminder that we are primarily water and that evaporation could take it all away. Summer evenings are pretty nice, I admit.
Spring
March – April
Summer
May – July
Autumn
August – November
Winter
December – February
Baseball has spoiled our air at 1 News Plaza like a milk carton swollen with semi-solid horror. With that gift comes the death of all banal conversation.
No more talk of office air conditioning hell bent on cryogenically preserving us. No more talk of pizza crusts. And no more natural talk of Shackleton’s great expeditions (I had to force this conversation just today!) Suck all of that chatter away and replace it with bird shit.
Our 160-mile proximity to the Lou imparts a certain tug-of-war on poor Peoria. Look closely enough and you’ll discover gerrymandering rivaling the best in politics, with adjacent neighbors waving battle flags for the Cardinals or Cubs. Genetics seem to play some sort of role in the mess, but I’m not about to bring science into this squabble.
Your author was just trying to do his job that’s not his job (maintenance/IT support/counselor) when disaster struck. I’ve wasted so much time getting to the point of this damn piece, so here’s a quick outline for your busy schedule:
In other words, it’s the closest I’ve come to feeling like a wanted criminal.
Thankfully, you’ve read this far and will be hearing a tale of heroism so great that you’ll call the kids into the room (even those you haven’t fathered or borne yet!) I marched (slunk) back into the lion’s den (sports department), grabbed the nearest sword (remote control) and menaced (button-pressed) it toward the offending devices (cable TV box, wires, television) and conjured it all back to life (you can watch TBS again.)
Editor’s note: Baseball can still be a lovely thing to watch, enjoy and – we presume – to play. Just leave the teams out of it. And please call it entertainment.
Additional editor’s note: Adam loves baseball.
We gather for Serpico and quickly learn that you cant mic a large group using a laptop on a coffee table. Barto, stop buggin’ me!
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There’s a knock at my apartment door and I react the same way we all do – argh, shit, sorry, I’m a loud monster.
The door opens and a frail, hunched-over man stands outside with an enormous silver platter, carrying three porcelain plates draped in pink Saran Wrap with small paper napkins underneath.
Howdy, partner! Would you like some banana cream pie?
This cowboy is the elderly gentleman who lives with his wife on my building’s floor. I’ve unofficially adopted them as my Peoria grandparents, and though I’m not entirely sure they’re aware of this one-way pledge, I like to think that they must have some idea each time I greet them by their honorifics.
The Mrs. will often be doing laundry when I’m leaving for work, always apologizing for tying up the machine. I assure her that it’s no problem, that I’m on my way out (and usually running late.)
There are smells that waft down the hallway on weekends – bacon. I often hear the newspaper deliverer step off the elevator at 5 a.m. and plop down the Journal Star on their doormat.
A small dish of Wint-O-Green Lifesavers is periodically refilled in the common hallway we share.
It’s time to write a thank-you note.
I have “Western Swing & Other Things” to thank for this 1948 song. The show is a Saturday morning staple in rural Kansas, an anachronism of radio that shouldn’t exist anymore. Allen Bailey (Dodge City’s Marshall Allen Bailey, if you want to get technical) and Cowgirl Janey play the best cowboy music for three solid hours, along with a touch of Big Band and classic crooners. It’s probably not for everyone, but if I can convince a girl in Scotland to listen to it, then isn’t that endorsement enough?
This particular song by Carson Robison reminds me of Ken Burns’ Dust Bowl series, of David Carradine as Woody Guthrie in “Bound for Glory“, of every Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton miracle, of wind so strong you can only inch forward. Robison is Kansas through and through, resigned pessimism and all.
This is probably the equivalent of showing how hot dogs are made to most of you, but here’s a portion of the reporting/editing staff at the Journal Star on election night. It’s a High Holy Day of newspapers, a rare instance of free dinner (pizza) and daysiders struggling to make it to midnight.
But 180 degrees isn’t enough to cover everyone. The hard-working copy deskers are just out of frame, as is the sports department.
And though we can easily moan about election nights of yore, where not a desk was empty and the noise was twice as loud, it remains a remarkable machine unequaled by our TV brethren.